Last October, Long Mama—a Milwaukee band composed of vocalist and guitarist Kat Wodtke, drummer Nick Lang, guitarist Andrew Koenig, and bassist Samual Odin—released its long-awaited and highly-anticipated debut album, Poor Pretender. The record, which was nearly three years in the making, proved to be well worth the wait, as it garnered oodles of positive press throughout Milwaukee and beyond while earning placement on a number of year-end Best Albums lists (including ours).
As Long Mama prepares for what’s sure to be a busy, festival-laden 2023 and now faces the challenge of writing a follow-up to its outstanding debut album, they decided to treat listeners to a new music video for one of Poor Pretender‘s standout tracks. Fittingly for a video with an early February release, the song itself actually has a lot to do with winter.
“The Narrows” chronicles “The Mad Trapper Of Rat River,” a fugitive who led authorities on a 33-day manhunt through 150 miles of brutally cold Canadian wilderness in the winter of 1932. The song—that’s sung from the perspective of the trapper known as Albert Johnson (whose true identity remains unknown) during his month on the lam before being killed in a shootout—gets a fitting visual pairing. Kati Katchever‘s grainy Super 8 footage of snow-swept landscapes combines with swirling camera work and erratic editing to give us what could’ve been the Mad Trapper’s perspective as was tracked through the Northwest Territories and Yukon.
Click for the excellent song and stick around for the inventive music video concept that sets the scene for one of North America’s most intriguing manhunts.