By: Josh Kitchen / May 10, 2024
“It’s my favorite song I’ve written, and I feel very lucky that my real life high school best friend wanted to sing it with me and that we are singing it together in a movie that our younger selves would have been unbearably obsessed with." - Sloppy Jane's Haley Dahl
Photo by Andrea H. Pérez @andreahperez
The latest trippy, fluorescently lighted, psycho-horror film from A24, the Jane Schoenbrun directed I Saw The TV Glow, fries your brain like an egg and then scrambles it up before tossing it in a blender. Out now in limited release in New York and Los Angeles, the film asks weighty questions about acceptance of who you are in a society that refuses to The film aims to make you confront weighty ideas like with displays of truly frightening and nightmarish dreamscapes set to suburban scenes of 90's domestic life shot brilliantly by Eric Yue.
(L-R) Justice Smith, Brigette Lundy-Paine Credit: Courtesy of A24
What truly sets I Saw The TV Glow apart from other modern horror fare though, is it's soundtrack. With an original score by lo-fi indie icon Alex G, the film features original music by some of indie-rock's current greats like Caroline Polachek, Bartees Strange, and in perhaps the most integral track to the essence of the film is Sloppy Jane's "Claw Machine" which features Phoebe Bridgers joining on vocals and playing guitar.
Without giving away too much, Sloppy Jane's Haley Dahl and Bridgers appear in the film to perform "Claw Machine."Taking place in a dingey club on the outskirts of town, the film's leads, Justice Smith and Brigette Lundy-Paine watch Sloppy Jane play at the bar while they discuss the film's fictional television show, The Pink Opaque.
Haley Dahl formed Sloppy when she was 15 along with high-school best friend Phoebe Bridgers. Describing the band to someone who has never seen them live can be difficult, but an attempt might say they're like an indie-punk-doom-rock-avant-garde-performance art outfit that demands to be seen live, playing often wild and uninhibited shows that feature Dahl singing with blue paint dripping from her mouth.
In 2021, Sloppy Jane released their stunning sophomore album, Madison, on Bridgers' own Saddest Factory Records. Recorded in an actual cave - Lost World Caverns in West Virginia, Madison features Dahl singing about feelings of loss, an ugly world, and the search for beauty within it. "Claw Machine" is a song that can only exist because of Dahl's exploration of these themes, but instead of the deep and claustrophobic feeling of being lost in darkness within the earth, on "Claw Machine", Dahl makes you feel like you're lost in the worlds we've created in our own heads, and the ones we've grown to know ourselves in as seen on TV.
"I saw the TV glow/I'm in the eighth grade/sending grown men grainy photos/of my ribcage," Dahl sings over a slow building piano theme. Joined by Bridgers on vocals and guitar, the song builds until it unleashes into a crescendo of cries of "I think I was born bored, I think I was born blue." The song's emotional center is the lyric, "My heart is like a claw machine/Its only function is for reaching/Can't hold on to anything/No I can't hold on to anything," and it gets at a central theme of the film: the feeling of having nothing inside of you, when in reality, it's society and those around you who refuse to accept who you really are.
Dahl explains, “Claw Machine” is about the violent and somewhat abstract sense of longing I felt as a child. the feeling of missing someone who doesn’t exist, of whispering “i want to go home,” to myself when i was already in my own bed. It’s bookended with vignettes from my real adolescent life- a car wreck, my eating disorder, skipping class, and images of my childhood home.”
Photo by Mika Lungulov-Klotz @_nooooooooooo
"Claw Machine" is a serious contender for song of the year. It picks you up, grabs you, drops you, and picks you up again until you finally fall out of the machine's side door, having to face the world outside. "Claw Machine" is out today along with the rest of the I Saw The TV Glow original soundtrack, and I Saw The TV Glow hits theaters nationwide on May 17.
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