VIDEO PREMIERE | FENCES, "Paper Route"

The earth trotting troubadour can convey in song the coverage and span of earth walked with intricately interwoven tales and quips of the various narratives that have populated their paths. The troubadour confronts victories. Recounts near misses. Laments shortcomings. Reconciles the past while seeking to gain a better grasp of the present and maybe a kernel of wisdom for the future trails to follow. Thus are the work of Seattle upstart FENCES, the moniker of Christopher Mansfield (known for work with Tegan and Sara, Cedric Bixler-Zavala of The Mars Volta/At the Drive-In, Macklemore), who features a debut look at the Not Here-directed lyric video for the mind roving "Paper Route" to commemorate the re-release of Failure Sculptures (Deluxe Version). “Route” is an invitation to join Mansfield on a trip through yesterday’s papers that rides the rails in a zoetrope spin of personal motion picture chapters that play out in a continuous matinee series of showings in the heart and feverish mind.

The lyric visual sees Christopher roaming about the beaches, cities, trains and the vast wilderness of the great wide yonder. The flickering sepia toned filter of scene collages are edited in a rotation of feelings like a carnival Ferris wheel ride of emotively swirling diary poetics. Cryptic allusions of adversity, reflections on previously living in the Sunshine State, vain attempts to temper and assuage the tempests of conflicts, contrasts and confrontations are bemoaned in FENCES’ lamentations of living with eyes wide open, affixed upward and pointed at the road ahead. "Paper Route" both visually and musically offers an organic recollection of sentimental sagas and battles of fighting argumentative fires with the cool neutralizing pacification of cold water. Not Here's video provides a privy feel as if the viewer has stumbled on some old reels of nostalgia inducing family films that capture the world like a timeless thought transit system of rusty railways, arid dirt paths, concrete sidewalks to the hard asphalt streets that stretch outward into the tributaries of endless highways.

A moment with Christopher Mansfield of FENCES; photographed by Christian Sorenson Hansen.

Christopher Mansfield, aka FENCES, shared some of the sentiments and reflections that informed "Paper Route" with some insights on what Failure Sculptures still means to them now:

“Paper Route” is essentially putting prose to a memory. Everything in the song happened as it was sang. Behind the flowers and idioms of course. I’ve written hundreds of songs but I actually do like this one quite a bit. As far as the album as a whole and my feelings on that now...I won’t lie there is a degree or embarrassment just for the sheer fact that all the songs are prose to memory. You’re never supposed to read someone’s diary right? That is unless they sell it.

FENCES' rerelease of Failure Sculptures (Deluxe Edition) will be available March 5 via ENCI Records, with a new EP slated for release this spring.