TELL, Is Making Waves With “Boiling The Ocean “

Illustration by Morrison Digital Art
Designed by J. Kaliontzis

We recently got check out the brand new video for “Boiling The Ocean”,from Boston alt-rock band, TELL. You can watch the Rick Berlin directed video below.

Boston alt-rock band, TELL, artfully addresses the over-crowded internet landscape, the way we communicate, and how those things shape both what we consume and what we exude, through a rumbling new single titled “Boiling The Ocean.” ( and we love every minute of it.)

The follow-up to March’s fiery and anthemic “Sweet Proximity,” this slow-burner companion track with a heavy low-end and atmospheric snarl first arrives via a Rick Berlin, brilliantly directed music video today, (Tuesday, April 15,) before the streaming release that following Friday. The band are eager to perform the song live – and in-person – when they play The Square Root in Roslindale on May 9, and then Allston’s O’Brien’s Pub alongside Joe Kaplow on June 8.

Photo credit- Dan Saltzman

This is my ‘fuck the internet’ song, expressing frustration how as creative artists we all have no choice but to use this same medium to get our music out,” says outspoken TELL guitarist and vocalist David Wildman. “In that sense it is kind of a ghetto that is impossible to escape. We’re all on our own trying to figure it out. And while there no longer are record companies exploiting us, there is also no way to make any money because streaming sites like Spotify have pretty much demonetized everything, and the labels that do exist push crap at the highest level. So yeah, we’re saying blow the whole thing up.

It is crystal clear that TELL, isn’t afraid to tell it like it is , and this definitely the case with “Boiling The Ocean “

The title, “Boiling the Ocean,” is lifted from the business world, a phrase that urges a person, team, or company to do whatever is necessary to get a result, even if the task seems impossible. So as Wildman – joined in TELL by guitarist Jim Foster; bassist Jay Raffi; and drummer Patrick Crann – decries our current conundrum where the internet is paradoxically facilitating and standing in the way of communicating the quartet’s music, he suggests it’s high time, to borrow a common post-punk rallying cry, to just rip it up and start again.    

It’s all about the frustrations of connecting in this present environment, because in order to do it, you have to bend yourself to fit the medium,” Wildman adds. “I suppose this goes back to the early days where pop songs had to be 3:30 minutes tops because that’s all you could fit on a 45. Now the conditions that form the music are much more complex and on multiple levels, but no less restrictive in their way. Of course no one gives a shit about any of that, and we just want to make a video that catches people’s attention with cool images.” 

Enter Berlin for that, who agreed with the band on a concept that showed TELL performing live, but with the ocean projected over them, inspired by early Andy Warhol shows with The Velvet Underground. The symbolic gesture enhances not only the visual but the lyrical matter; an all-encompassing body of water can either drown a person or lift a person up, and in the video, TELL, dressed in all-whites as a cohesive unit, deliver “Boiling The Ocean” as found-footage scenes flash across their bodies and faces, the blue glow of the ocean both suffocating and illuminating. Just like the internet itself. 

Boiling The Ocean,” the track, was produced and mixed by Benny Grotto at Mad Oak Studios in Allston, Massachusetts, who also lent his studio work to “Sweet Proximity.” True to the songs’ sharing their companion nature, as both mark the first new TELL music since last year’s breakout EP Life In Reverse, the single artwork is the same as that of “Sweet Proximity,” featuring an illustration by Morrison Digital Art and design by J. Kaliontzis.  The band is taking a classic double A-side approach, another way to angle their art for the modern digital promo landscape. 

We love the beautiful art/musical entanglement that races throughout “Boiling The Ocean “ TELL has truly given the world a wonderful artistic gift.

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