A lot of punk rock takes aim at corrupt powers that hover over us daily, though Rotterdam’s Library Card have none of it: the anxious “Mirror Factory” encloses reflective walls around ourselves, forcing us to face our own ruin like that famous torture scene in A Clockwork Orange. The song charges into a new sinister gear halfway with blowtorch guitar discharges and bruised speak-sing vocals.
“Mirror Factory is about running after yourself but not being able to catch up. Like tripping over your own feet while trying to rush. You are the only one with the solution, while you are anxiously trying to avoid that person”, band founder and vocalist Lot van Teylingen says of the track. They offhandedly scoff at “tall buildings like gravestones”, seemingly referencing the city’s ballooning, corrupted housing market, ramping up the cost of living at toxic rates.
After Kalaallit Nunaat, VULVA and Tramhaus, Library Card is another exciting, hungry new outfit in a burgeoning new wave of noise-makers scurrying within the Dutch porty city. Along with Van Teylingen and drummer Emre Karayalçin, the band also features Kat Kalkman of Neighbours Burning Neighbours and Mitchell Quitz of The Lumes.
Kalkman directed the gloomy video for “Mirror Factory” “I wanted static shots in which Lot sang/recited their text with a dynamic background,” they comment. “I thought this idea fit well with the song, about how there’s always a lot going on around you and within yourself, but how sometimes that doesn’t reflect on the outside. While everything goes on, again and again as Lot repeatedly sings: ‘all over again’.”
Watch it below and find the song on other streaming outlets.
