Here’s something weird about relationships—no matter how tight you might be, you’ll never know for sure what the person on the other side of the bed is thinking.

Maybe they’re spending one of those awkward pauses at dinner thinking about a pre-you dalliance on the shores of Ko Phi Phi circa 2013. Or that grimy, drug-hazed hookup after the Daughters show last November at the Rickshaw before the Pandemic ruined one-night-only personal encounters of all flavours.

The video for “Justine” from the new Vancouver super-project Satellite and the Harpoonist will get you thinking about such things. Director and animator Peter Ricq—of Humans and League of Super Evil fame—creates a world that reminds you why you love Marv Newland, Adventure Time, and the legendary Spike and Mike.

On the sonic side of things, you can file “Justine” under the umbrella of panty-removal music, but more on the raw and dirty side of thing than the silky, seductive, and smooth. Yes it’s soulfully sexy, but in a totally unvarnished and sweat-dripping acid-funk way.

In revealing the song’s backstory, Vancouver vet Shawn Hall has stated that inspirations included infatuations, chainsaws, acid, back-deck hamgs, tall trees, and the thing that you can’t fight known as City Hall. Helping him pull everything together on “Justine” is a cast of collaborators including Theo Vincent of the Boom Booms, Geoff Hillhorst from the Deep Dark Woods, and Bradford Reed (on long from Brooklyn’s King Missile III.

Watch, and let your mind drift to better times. When life didn't consist of three-month Sexican standoffs you don't even have the mental bandwidth to address. Or daily squabbling about everything from whose turn it is to unload the dishwasher to whether it's going to be Indian, Thai, or West Texas-meets-Lower Mongolia barbecue fusion from Skip the Dishes, which continues to bankrupt you but you're too emotionally drained by lockdown life to care. 

As "Justine" reminds us, there were times when everything wasn't seemingly in the dumper. Times like that midnight rendezvous on the shores of Nice in France, where it somehow didn’t matter that you ended up with a sand rash for what seemed like a week. The person lying next to you doesn’t have to know you’re thinking about that. Really, it’s better that way.