Umphrey’s McGee Unveils ‘The Silent Type’ Video

Chicago rockers Umphrey’s McGee are gearing up to issue their new studio album, it’s not us, on January 12 via their own Nothing Too Fancy Music label. Today, the band has released a video for the LP’s lead single, “The Silent Type.”

Forbes premiered the video and spoke with Brendan Bayliss and Joel Cummins about the clip and the album. “The Silent Type” video is driven by technology and gives viewers a taste of a night in The Windy City. UM worked with digital studio Reel FX and director Pete Herzog on the video. Bayliss talked about the band’s connection with Chicago, “We’re from here, that’s really where we cut our teeth, I still live here, we have an office out here. It made sense with the access we had to the drone footage and the concert on the lake and everything. And Chicago’s got everything you need for a crazy night. I love this city and I’m glad you saw this as a love letter to the city because it’s a shout out to Chicago for sure. I love the end with the fireworks going off, it’s glorious.”

Joel discussed how UM shies away from literal interpretation of lyrics, “You don’t want something that has more universality to be replaced by an image that may not be as applicable to one person or another. Especially with Brendan’s voice, he has this cryptic, vague, mysterious nature to a lot of the lyrics that he writes. We have a running conversation of me trying to guess what his songs are about and 99 percent of the time he just cracks up. ‘Dude, that’s not even close.'”

Brendan detailed the diversity of music found on it’s not us, “It’s interesting because the album is really sonically all over the place. This track one, you can call it a dance song, but I think it’s more of a rock song. Then two songs later there’s a blues song and two songs there’s a prog song and two songs later there’s an acoustic song. So I don’t know if it represents the entire album because I don’t feel like we’re a band that you could put on one song and get the feel for us, which is probably a good thing and a bad thing. But ‘The Silent Type’ does represent where we’re at as far as we’re learning to be a little bit more concise and trim the fat.”

Watch the video for “The Silent Type”:

it’s not us Tracklist

• 1. “The Silent Type”
• 2. “Looks”
• 3. “Whistle Kids”
• 4. “Half Delayed”
• 5. “Maybe Someday”
• 6. “Remind Me”
• 7. “You & You Alone”
• 8. “Forks”
• 9. “Speak Up”
• 10. “Piranhas”
• 11. “Dark Brush”