Shortstraw: Big in Japan

Today sees the release of Shortstraw’s new music video for their single ‘High School’. The video was made while the band was on tour in Japan in October 2015, and was shot by Tom Revington and directed by Russell Grant and Alastair Thomas, all members of Shortstraw.

“This video is Russ’ brainchild,” says Alistair. “He envisioned this badass Japanese schoolgirl just striding down a Japanese street and beating sh*t up as she went along. We then fleshed it out together to include some special effects and the band displaying some poor running form too!”

Shot in Osaka and Tokyo, the band had a day off on tour and decided to put it to good use and make a video. Fortunately their translator, Haruka, was super keen to get involved, and after she flipped off some queue jumpers at Universal Studios they knew they had found their heroine. They scoured the neighbourhood called America before they found the ideal road and managed to find a trolley from a nearby music shop to use as dolly and tracks. They were initially using a minibus and shooting out the back, but the ever-vigilant Japanese police told them they were not allowed to do that.

Whilst having loads of lost in translation moments as they tried to explain to the police and passers by what they were doing, they eventually got away with shooting the video. They were able to sneak in cameos from pretty much every friend of theirs in Japan, including Sawagi, Ai (their translator from a 2014 tour), Denims (another band they had toured with in Japan), Fabian (their sound engineer) and Dawa from Flake Records, the label responsible for bringing them to Japan.

The video can be described as a badass Japanese schoolgirl who goes on a vengeful rampage through the streets of Japan in search of that meddling band, Shortstraw. She destroys them with a guitar solo.