Escapism is hardly an anomaly in the music industry, in the same way that it's a symbolic space for creative exploration it’s also a way to express fear of the subsequent future by avoiding it. In his new single “Driving” Bennet Coast leans into this mindset as he revels in the inevitable act of getting older. Influenced by a coming-of-age vignette, unsteady guitar synths and glitterings of alternative vocals combine to create a distant sound that echoes throughout the track, romanticizing what it would be like to drive far away and never look back. 

Throughout the track, poetic lines about figuring out where he's going and who he’s going with follow metaphors and contradictions of cars and passenger seats. Merging together to create a disorienting feel that projects the artist's uneasiness as he sings about waiting for the moment he feels in control of his own path. It's in this restless space that the artist shines driven closer and closer to the edge tempted by an ambitious free fall into a vision larger than the life he’s lived, singing “Come fly with me, I’m speeding into my starlight.” Yet in between ambiguous lyrics and wistful verses, it becomes clear that Bennetts's desire to escape reality is actually just a disguise for the increasing feeling that he’s losing control, as he sings “Collide with me I’m speeding to my starlight…If I lose control I guess I’m not a lost cause.” 

While the song keeps the artist grounded only dreaming of escaping, the video is where Coast envisions a kind of simulative reality. Produced and directed by Bennett himself, the film elevates the song's eccentricities in a narrative told via nostalgic fantasy, where the mundane reality of the present meets futurism. In between beautifully shot vignettes of candid moments of everyday life, are images of a matrix style control room that evade any sense of natural reality. The relationship between the natural and the artificial is an articulation of individual control, something that the artist contemplates throughout the film as philosophical questions like “What do I hold on to?” and “Where are you going?” appear around him. Prompts like these are left answered, and for good reason, it's the artist's way of regaining control and in doing so becoming the driver of his own life.

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