Video Premiere: Couvo, "Goon Squad"

Brooklyn-based indie-pop newcomer, Couvo (aka Josh Couvares), releases his new album, When This All Ends, on April 24. The album was mixed by Charlie Stavish (Jenny Lewis, Interpol, Weezer) and mastered by Robin Schmidt (The 1975, The Japanese House, Ben Howard).

When This All Ends is a coming-of-age tale for Couvares, who plans to keep exuberance intact but yearns to jettison reckless abandon and feckless joy, now a 26-year-old working-class citizen; and while he may not be The Only Living Boy in New York, he’s not impervious to loneliness. Swallowing the dregs that remain of youthful naiveté, the unassuming crooner yields wistful, spirited coos akin to Ezra Koenig and Morning Benders era Chris Chu. Through character-driven exploits of the heart and semi-autobiographical accounts, Couvo’s lyrics take precedence, though his big-hearted choruses remain unaffected and equally poignant.

Today, Ghettoblaster has the pleasure of premiering the lyric video for “Goon Squad,” which Couvares calls “the heart of the record.” This is what he says about the song.

“The title of this track is ripped from A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, which, to me – like this record – is a story that tries to address the question, What does it mean to grow up? The singer is trying to convince himself he’s matured and has grown out of making bad decisions. The girl in this song is, well, less than convinced. In fact, I think the whole chorus is essentially the girl’s pickup line for the narrator.

“What does it mean to grow up? Is doing the right thing or mature thing mutually exclusive? These are the questions the narrator is thinking about while he’s drunk in this girl’s apartment one summer afternoon. And it’s not just him that thinks this–in a lot of ways, how our modern capitalist society is set up to make you believe this is the way life has to be. We teach people, especially young men, that growing up means feeling less and making more money – bell hooks’ The Will To Change really digs into this- which is why the narrator says, ‘The older I get, the harder it is to feel anything/Like growing up is just the numbing of the day-to-day.’”