PLAYING DETROIT: Frontier Ruckus Share “Enter the Kingdom” Video

Frontier Ruckus has been dishing out deeply personal, heavy-hearted folk rock for fifteen years. Their latest installment of polite devastation comes in the form of Enter the Kingdom. Their fifth record (released in the February of this year) comes full circle with the striking visual for the album’s title track, which premiered on Billboard last week.

Written, edited and directed by Ohio native and Detroit transplant Jay Curtis Miller, “Enter the Kingdom” is a beautiful midwestern narrative following the death of a family’s matriarch, an estranged father figure and a wedding that shrinks, swells and sings in the absence of both. Frontier Ruckus frontman Matthew Milia admits the video’s interpretation may stray from his personal connection to the song’s meaning, but agrees that the clip still explores the weight of loss and the complexities and frailties of family. “The family’s scattered, all that once mattered will die/ I sleep in the bush that separates the houses/ I wake with a push from random ex-spouses” sings Milia, alongside a sweeping string section and tender backing vocals. Miller accents the drama by pairing childhood flashbacks, mental projections and delicate close-ups that feel more like portraiture than music video. Just over seven minutes long, “Enter the Kindom” gives space to connect, reflect and dive deep into a world that only Frontier Ruckus can create: quiet tales of surrender, triumph and heartbreaking malaise.

Grab the tissues and enter Frontier Ruckus’ uneasy kingdom below:

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PLAYING DETROIT: Frontier Ruckus “Our Flowers Are Still Burning” Video

Frontier Ruckus

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Frontier Ruckus
Frontier Ruckus

Matthew Milia and his gaggle of lovelorn folkies – otherwise known as Frontier Ruckus – return with a sardonic make-out party prelude to their forthcoming record Enter the Kingdom. The sad, sensual clip for latest single “Our Flowers Are Still Burning” offers a camcorder view of social loneliness ahead of the album’s February 17th release. A slow-dance, folk-ified, Big Star-esque confessional with a touch of reversed male gaze, “Flowers” instills hopeful resonance with listlessness revery, something the Frontier gang has championed and expanded upon.

Singer and guitarist Anna Burch documents the party through a vintage handheld, a perfect companion to Ruckus’ boxes-in-your-parents-attic aesthetic. The low-key gathering is standard Detroit, containing a quiet cast of characters who find temporary love, lust and casual catharsis in one another. Burch wanders upstairs to discover Milia alone, singing and soaking fully clothed in a running shower as spit swapping commences downstairs. Whether Milia is struck by social anxiety, heartache or an overwhelming sense of not knowing his role in the grand (and not-so-grand) scheme of things, Burch lovingly coerces him from his bath time meltdown with the promise of a cake decorated with sugary, saccharine letters spelling out the song’s title.

The band leaves the house party in the dead of winter, Milia still wet and without a jacket or a lover, but surrounded by his Frontier Ruckus bandmates, resigned to keep on trucking even in the harsh light of the morning after.

 

Grab a tissue or a kiss and take a sad soak with Frontier Ruckus below:

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