Behind The Scenes - Better Than Never – Learning To Swim (2016)

Vocalist of Better Than Never, James Harris, says of his band’s forthcoming record: “Head Under Water covers the idea of how dealing with depression and anxiety can sometimes just feel like you are drowning in a sea of hopelessness, the ball and chain in the imagery showing how you can feel chained down by those struggles and anchored at rock bottom.” Better Than Never decided to take maximum advantage of their girthy line-up during the writing process, the members sitting down as a group and working together on every track for several months, trying to perfect every aspect. The result is an EP jam-packed with hard-hitting layers: the dual vocalists are used to maximal effect, triple stacked guitars cleverly interplay and the lyrical content delivers a punch to the feels. With the release scheduled for December, the band recently unveiled the video for lead single ‘Learning To Swim’ and now are pleased to give you a behind the scenes insight into it’s creation…

We picked the track ‘Learning to Swim' to be our first music video from the new EP mostly because it was the track which resonated with us the most. I don’t want to say it’s the best song on the record, but it definitely speaks most candidly about a lot of the stuff going on in our lives since our last release. The song encapsulates the whole record really well, because it doesn’t just talk about the rough times but more so getting through them. It addresses why it’s still worth fighting, even when it just seems pointless.

We asked our friend Keir to help us shoot the video and he gladly obliged. Much like we’re a band trying to get our feet off the ground, he’s an aspiring filmmaker in a similar situation, meaning it was sort of a match made in heaven. Perhaps though, we'd have preferred a match of ourselves and Christopher Nolan, but we like Keir so we'll give him the benefit of the doubt!

With the narrative of the video, we wanted to encapsulate the rough times. But we also wanted it to be a little over the top and dramatic, to help reinforce the song’s intention of saying ‘it’s not all doom and gloom and everything always gets better’.

The shoot went surprisingly well - forgetting a cock up on our bassists Jake's part where he actually booked the pool we were shooting at, for the wrong day. We were pleasantly surprised by this though because as far as Better than Never cock ups go, this was relatively small. Ultimately we knew that once the stress of rearranging that was out of the way, we should have a clear run for the rest of filming.

The video wouldn’t have been possible though without the help of our good friend Kei from Coast to Coast. Riding a bike straight into a pool definitely wasn’t the most daring of stunts, but none of us were up for doing it. He did also get to destroy our Macbook and bass though, so maybe that was a kind of retribution for him.

One of the best parts from shooting the video was being able to visit the fair. Most of us haven’t been since we were kids and to go back and do it with your best friends, regardless of shooting the video, was a memory we'll have forever. Admittedly we remember it being cheaper when we had our parents to pay for us though. For the next release we'll definitely be asking our label Fox Records for a ‘fair’ budget so we can go again.

Overall were really proud of the video, we had such a fun weekend shooting it which we really hope shines through when you watch it, that’s what this band is all about.