Five Eight's Anthem To Fleeing A Troubled Marriage

The veteran rock group Five Eight has always made music that's, at times, darkly comic and conflicted. The band's scorcher, "Florida" tells the story of a woman who flees an abusive relationship — but, in an almost surreal juxtaposition of imagery, a new video for the track shows the band flailing while trying to perform on a trampoline.

"I love to jump," Five Eight frontman Mike Mantione tells us via email. "There is a symbolic link to the fun rocking of the riff and chaotic collapsing of the band's gear."

Mantione says he was inspired to set the story-song in Florida because the state has always represented a kind of escape. "It's the end of the line," he says. "Many times, divorce happens because someone's life depends on it. The song is about is one of those times. The music is just one riff played over and over. I wanted to write an anthem to the relentlessness of her leaving no-matter-what. She is going to start again, and there's got to be something better."

The video was directed by filmmaker Lance Bangs, who intercut footage from his own film, currently in production and that, coincidentally, is set in Florida. "I was lucky to meet the band Five Eight early in my development as a filmmaker and a person," Bangs says via email. "They were phenomenal to film and travel with as well as being thoughtful, funny, creatively compelling people to grow up among. On many of our travels we explored Florida, the setting of this current song." He says the woman who appears in the video is "comedian Clare O'Kane, passing through some of the same sorts of Florida landscapes that we had previously navigated during early Five Eight tours."

"Florida" is from Five Eight's most recent full-length, Songs For St. Jude.

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