Kim Gray’s music video for “Taking It Too Easy” shows the Vancouver psych-pop rocker doing just that: taking it easy. Based on the circumstances that influenced the making of his album Compulsion, released last August on Bad Diet Records, he could stand to take his mind off of a few things.
After getting out of a long-term relationship, Gray began meeting a lot of people which got him thinking about the shallow ways people connect with each other in the digital age. In response, he recoiled from what he dubbed “meaningless distractions”: memes, YouTube, and online dating. He further removed himself from popular conversation by abstaining from substances and meaningless sex.
In the carefree clip, shot at the Richmond Night Market two summers ago, Gray enjoys a bowl of ice cream while taking in music and dance, test-rides (and nearly falls off of) a hoverboard, and strolls through lots populated by animatronic dinosaurs and a gigantic Ultraman figure.
All this bustling, candy-coloured gloss certainly makes it easy to feel connected to the world, but in many scenes, Gray stares into the camera with his back turned to the fair’s splendid intrigues. The operative word in the song’s title is “Too”; perhaps overly aware that the games, snacks, and material items are just distractions in themselves, the video ends with Gray calling it a day and heading back to his car.
