Canasta’s Broken Heart

By Jenna Hawkins / August 12th, 2011 in Music / Chicago / 402 views

Chicago-based, chamber-pop sextet Canasta take us on an emotional rollercoaster in the music video for Mexico City, the first single to come from their third full-length release, ‘The Fakeout, the Tease and the Breather.’

Since their inception in 2002, the band’s goal was to ‘determine a line-up combining as many musical backgrounds and artistic influences’ as possible, something they’ve achieved with a roster which currently includes percussion, guitars, synths, keys and violin playing together in power pop harmony.

Talking about the new album, violinist Elizabeth Lindau told Portable,”Our songs often have sections that don’t fit in to the traditional verse/chorus/bridge structure, so we had to come up with our own names for the pieces of the songs so we could talk about them. So ‘the fakeout’ was what we called the chords that lead into the chorus but fake you out and don’t actually resolve into the chorus…”the tease” and the “breather” are other song elements that we so named.”

Directed by Eduardo Cintron and filmed around their hometown earlier this year, the video for Mexico City is a direct account of an experience vocalist Matt Priest had when he planned a trip to Mexico—where his girlfriend was studying—only to find her with another man.

“The song is about [how], despite being the largest person around physically, [you still] feel small and insignificant and invisible in those circumstances,” said Lindau.

Cintron explained the video is about the “psychological effects of being heart broken and the emotions of going through and overcoming that moment, which everybody can relate to,” whether it happened in Mexico or not.