I fall screaming through cobblestone streets
With the bottle in hand I’m
Accepting defeat
I break all of my fingers
Still I cling to her feet
I bellow out her name as she throws off the sheets
Leknes & The Layoffs, originally from the twilight streets of Trondheim, Norway, have unfurled their debut offering, San Miguel. With a launch ceremony slated at Trondheim’s Dokkhuset on November 15th, frontman Stian Leknes (recently transposed partly to Mexico) has marshaled a gathering of local musical alchemists to conjure a record both cinematic and compellingly bleak. —
San Miguel surges with the force of a late-night reckoning. Leknes’ voice rasps through dense layers of whiskey-soaked regret and dark cabaret swagger, evoking Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen tangled together in a fevered dance overseen by Nick Cave. Saxophones punctuate the scene with coarse, guttural accents, while piano keys drop like tears on tarnished barroom floors, driven forward by jazz-inflected percussion that evokes both chaos and clarity. Leknes drags listeners willingly through purgatory, passion ringing raw and relentless, like traversing infernal circles only to ask for another round.
At its core, San Miguel wrestles with a relentless fixation upon a woman whose allure demolishes defenses and fuels an intoxicating spiral into ruin. This destructive passion sees Leknes metaphorically dying and reviving in an endless cycle of desire, desperation coloring every verse. His life, reduced to a singular craving, embodies a fervent, inescapable obsession.
As Leknes himself succinctly puts it, “San Miguel is a love song for the lost, a tribute to cities that scream, and to obsessions that kill.”
Leknes also directs the accompanying monochrome video, which is filmed and co-produced in Oaxaca by Mala Onda Studios, featuring editing, colour grading, and VFX by Snorre Hovdal. A shadow-laden tale unfolds around a man, shovel in hand, behind the wheel of a vintage Chevy, navigating dusty roads toward a secret-laden destination in the desert. Film noir sensibilities infuse every frame, crafting an atmospheric story heavy with suspense, an eloquent visual counterpart to the intensity pouring forth from the song itself. Think Ingmar Bergman directing a spaghetti western. (Warning: there is graphic violence)
Watch the video for “San Miguel” below:
With San Miguel, Leknes & The Layoffs stake a claim in the darker recesses of our psyches and nightmares, where desire, destruction, and devotion intertwine. This is the first taste of Leknes & The Layoffs from their upcoming album, M.S. Playhead Vol. 1, due out in October.
Listen to San Miguel below and order the single here.
Follow Leknes & The Layoffs:
Or via: