Matthew de Zoete (duh-ZOO-tuh) is a singer-songwriter based in southern Ontario, Canada who puts out music under the name Colour Film, which was also the title of his third record and its title track. (Ed: In another life, I even wrote about it!).
Since 2006, he’s been an active recording artist, songwriter, and live performer, appearing on stages with the best Canadian talent including Great Lake Swimmers, Serena Ryder, Whitehorse, and others. In 2016, he released the EP Super 8, featuring the centrepiece single, “The Money’s on the Dresser”.
Now, he’s released his newest single “Open Road”, featuring Caroline Brooks of folk-pop paragons The Good Lovelies.
Watch the video right here!
The song was inspired by a bike ride with de Zoete’s wife and two young daughters. They had pulled up ahead and a distance away from him at one point during their day out, inspiring de Zoete to think of his family as a kind of road to take him on a good journey.
To keep things authentic, the video (shot by Nathan Fleet) reproduced that ride, taking the same route that inspired him to write the song the day after the trip. This time is was Brooks who handled the bike duties.
With “Open Road” there’s a common thread that’s found in a lot of de Zoete’s music, particularly brought out in the video; Super 8 footage and the kind of gauzy memories of home movies captured on that vintage medium that has been the source of inspiration to de Zoete for many years.
With the wistful folk-pop of the song itself serving as soundtrack, the video seems to replicate that same gauzy and grainy quality of our favourite memories as we commonly experience them; as emotional impressions that we carry with us on our journeys. They are not always clearly defined, yet they shimmer with their own kind effusive beauty that somehow remains constant no matter where our journeys take us.
The song itself evokes the realization that we’re constantly leaving moments behind us, and that those moments ahead of us with the ones we love are all the more precious because of it. “Open Road” is a love song firmly planted in what’s most important to us when the distractions of our lives are set aside in favour of those things that give the journeys we take the most meaning.
It’s also about the people with whom we travel for however long we can, cherishing their company, and intertwining our memories with theirs. This can lead to journeys of other sorts, with their love for us and ours for them becoming a road that takes us to places inside of ourselves we never would have thought to go.
Happy listening!
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