Lou Mclean – Empty Cans (Video Premiere)

This song is really personal for me. It’s about how you tend to romanticise relationships when you’re in them, but as time passes you realise that you had those rose-tinted glasses on, and that things weren’t as perfect as you wanted them to be. The ‘empty cans’ in the song are symbolic of the urge to go out and get steaming to get over something, but it doesn’t do anything apart from numb the pain for a bit and cause chaos. It’s about being devastated, but then moving through it and realising you’re a better person for the experience. Things were amazing before the chaos and they’ll be amazing again.

My new EP is called Good Morning Easter Road as all the songs were written just after I moved to Leith. My songs are my stories; I write about my life pretty frankly, so I wanted the video to reflect the narrative of the song, but also to reflect me as a person. I’m really influenced by the aesthetic of Scottish seaside glamour: the neon lights of the arcade, ice creams, seagulls, abandoned buckets & spades. Sort of dated & melancholy but still fun & bright – it doesn’t take itself too seriously. A bit like myself!

Originally we were going to film indoors for the rest of the shoot, but the weather was on side that day so we went to the park instead. There’s nowhere more beautiful than Scotland in the sunshine so I was buzzing to get to show that. There was also that fresh graffiti on the wall which coordinated nicely with my outfit so we couldn’t have planned it better.

Diskscratch Films shot the video for me and we had a great laugh shooting it. At one point there was a guy in the park raving about 9/11 being an inside job etc, and harassing people. Then halfway through one of the takes of me singing on the bench, a woman got up and smacked him with an umbrella, right in front of me. All in a day’s work!

– Lou Mclean

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Good Morning Easter Road is self-released on 9 Jun. Lou Mclean will celebrate the release with a launch party at Leith Depot, Edinburgh, 8 Jun.