Los Angeles electro-pop band Child Seat are as attuned to the physical effects of music as they are to its emotional oscillations. Wrangling bits of post-punk, disco, and new wave atmospherics into a complex morass of well-worn influences and inspirations, the band concoct a unique perspective on the common ground which connects these various musical histories. Built around the twinned creativities of Madeleine Mathews (MAWD) and Josiah Mazzaschi (Light FM, Bizou), Child Seat is the perfect avenue through which they can share their shared sonic affections and offer a glimpse of something that feels both familiar and insular, a chaotic dancefloor miasma born from their collective visions.
With the recent release of their third album, Hyperphantasia, Mathews and Mazzaschi plunged headfirst into the shadowy depths of their pop and rock synthesis, finding undiscovered worlds of musical adventurism and adaptation. That album tore apart your senses, flooding your ears with the unpredictable twists and turns of vivid experience and memory. It was a phantasmagorical rollercoaster of seedy club euphoria and electronic opulence. But they’re not finished with us yet.
Released today, their latest single, “Stuck”, finds the band submerging themselves ever deeper into this ecstatic brew of sleazy indie pop draped across miles of danceable rhythms. Crafting an inescapable industrial dance-pop haze, they lure you in with promises of all-night bodily sensations and hold you there, trapped in an effervescent trance like moths drawn inexorably toward a flame. But there’s darkness laying beneath the surface, a reflection of their frustrations with how difficult it can be to sustain any sort of musical trajectory without sacrificing other parts of your life, and especially without established financial support. But they don’t wallow in this melancholy — they rise up and kick back, determined to work out a way forward if it’s the last thing they do.
“‘Stuck’ is about that feeling of watching the life you want get further away while you’re doing everything you can just to stay afloat,” Mathews says. “We wrote it from our experience trying to build a life in music, where money and access can sometimes feel like prerequisites for getting ahead, but it goes way beyond the music industry.
I think a lot of people know what it’s like to get stuck in a routine, job, or circumstance that leaves less and less room for the things they care about or truly want to pursue. It’s about that pressure and the frustration of watching other people move up while you feel like you’re standing still, and refusing to let go of the part of you that still wants more.
When you’re younger, you feel like you have all the time in the world to achieve whatever you want. With something like music especially, you go into it a little blind, with stars in your eyes. As you get older, you start to realize that being good at what you do isn’t always enough. You also have to pay your bills, support yourself, and somehow find the time, money, and energy to keep pursuing the thing you love. The blinders start to come off.“
She goes on to say: “Although the song comes from our personal experience, that feeling is pretty universal. Everyone can feel ‘stuck’ in different aspects of their life, especially when the practical realities of surviving start competing with the things you once imagined for yourself.
There’s also a bigger conversation behind the song about who actually gets the opportunity to pursue art long enough to build a career from it. As it becomes harder to make a reliable income from music, having financial support or access can become a huge advantage. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with coming from money, and that’s not what we’re criticizing. But if pursuing music becomes something that only people with a certain level of financial security can realistically sustain, we risk losing so much art…and so many perspectives from people who simply can’t afford to keep going.”
The song needed an appropriately themed video to highlight this idea of continued movement and evolution, of trying your best to keep going despite your circumstances, and they found a kindred spirit in director Ben Thomas.
“The video for ‘Stuck’ is basically the fantasy of escaping the life you feel trapped in,” explains Mathews. “We wanted the mart to feel painfully mundane and a little absurd, two people stuck at work, depressing hot weather playing on the TV (thanks to global warming), an annoying customer taking forever to count out four dollars in pennies, while this completely different version of our lives is sitting just on the other side of the screen.
As the song kicks in, that fantasy starts breaking through. We’re still physically in this run-down mart, but suddenly we’re performing, dancing and shifting in and out of the two realities through the TV, becoming these heightened, rockstar versions of ourselves.“
She continues: “Eventually we’re able to walk through the doors and fully enter that world, like we’ve finally escaped. But it doesn’t last. At the end, you’re dropped right back into the store and realize that almost no time has passed…the customer is still counting his pennies and we’re still stuck exactly where we started.
The video was directed by Ben Thomas and was completely DIY.
We shot the whole thing late at night in less than three and a half hours, and it was edited by our lead singer, Madeleine.
Even the chaos became part of it. Our bandmate’s wife did the makeup, and our dog came along because we didn’t want to leave her home. She started howling so loudly during the mart scenes that it was getting picked up by the microphones, so instead of fighting it, we put her in the video. Somehow a sad dog sitting around this depressing little store made the whole world feel even more bleak and chaotic.
Somehow, the process ended up mirroring the song itself: wanting something bigger, even when you’re working with whatever’s right in front of you. The song encompasses what it’s like to pursue a dream with little means, while it seems like a prerequisite in music these days that you need money to succeed. We didn’t have the luxury of a big crew or money to spend on fancy equipment, but that’s what brings the soul to both our music and our videos – that a lot of larger artists don’t have to worry about. Just as they don’t have to worry about giving all their energy away to a day job or worrying about paying for groceries or rent. Snapping back to reality at the end also mirrors what it’s like to be an up and coming smaller artist or band – you play a big show, you get the high… then Monday comes and it’s like it all never happened.“
Watch the video for “Stuck” below.
Follow the band on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram. Keep an ear out for more information on their upcoming fourth album due out later next year.
