Johnny Marr has shared the video for his catchy new song “Hi Hello,” the latest single off the former Smiths guitarist’s upcoming album Call the Comet.
The video finds Marr performing the song alone in a gazebo and a park bench in the dead of winter. The desolateness of the “Hi Hello” video – no one besides Marr appears in the clip despite the public settings – ties into themes from the new album, his third as a solo artist.
Call the Comet, due out June 15th, is inspired by both Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, with Marr’s lyrics drawing from an “alternative society” set in the “not-too-distant future.”
“I wouldn’t call it a concept record,” Marr told Rolling Stone of the album. “But it’s got a unifying theme going through it about the Earth welcoming a different intelligence from the cosmos to save us from our own plight. The title Call the Comet is sort of a conscious plea for a new way.”
“Hi Hello” has previously been likened to the Smiths’ “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” and Patti Smith’s “Dancing Barefoot”; in his interview with Rolling Stone, Marr talked about the similarities between those tracks.
“Another journalist brought that up and I said, ‘Oh, I can see that,'” Marr said. “I see why people think that it is the most immediately catchy song and it sounds like what people know me for.”