Video: Hallelujah Picassos - Dirty Suits (UTR Premiere)

Last week cult act Hallelujah Picassos surfaced with the fantastic new single 'Dirty Suits' and now the Auckland-based five-piece are sharing a DIY video for the cut - which we are honoured to premiere here at UTR. Check out the clip and then read our catch up with the band below...

Hi Picassos!! Upon releasing ‘Dirty Suits’ you called it a companion piece to your 2014 release ‘Hang All Bankers’. Can you walk us through how the track came together??

​The song was ​originally written by the band’s singer Roland Rorschach with Darryn Harkness (current Picassos bass player) and first performed with Darryn’s band New Telepathics (on their 2011 album Clapping with Rockets). We started kicking it round at practice when working on our last EP and reinvented the song, breathing new life into its twisted soul and making it our own. The song follows themes from the EP like in 'Hang All Bankers', talking about money, politics and corruption. The idea is bankers as crooks.

The song was released within days of John Key’s resignation as Prime Minister. Any thoughts on what might have been the breaking point for him??

​No. Not expending energy thinking about him​.

2014 saw you release your first EP in nearly 20 years, and now there’s ‘Dirty Suits’ and more songs on the way. What is it like coming together to write again, are you in the same dynamic or have things shifted?

​It's really easy - you have that shared musical history and we're all still friends, so hanging out and talking music, comics, films, or whatever is just a good time. ​Writing is much simpler too, with the advances in studio technology. We used to have to be really economical in our studio efforts cos you were paying a hundred bucks an hour. But that discipline serves us well.

‘Dirty Suits’ was recorded at the Institute For Telepathic Research, can you tell us a bit about the set up there?

​It's run by our bass player Darren Harkness, who plays and records there with his bands Loud Ghost​ ​/ New Telepathics, along with recording other acts like Rackets. It's ​​a bunch of mics, some instruments, a nice room, and Darren's recording skills. That's all we need.

The video we’re airing today was directed by your man John Pain. What was the original idea and how did it all come together?

We wanted to do something simple and energetic, to match the song, so went for a performance video, wearing suits and bandannas, as you do. John did an awesome job directing and editing it, frying it up into a pretty wild visual feast, incorporating the lyrics. We like it lots. Hope you do too.