Kean Kavanagh is howling at the moon in ‘Street Lights’

Words: Dylan Murphy

Watch the exclusive premiere of the second video from Kean Kavanagh’s debut project Dog Person.

Soft Boy Records co-founder Kean Kavanagh has stepped out the shadows somewhat in 2020. Though frequently working with the rest of his fellow crew on collaborative cuts, there has been a palpable demand for a solo body of work. The Portlaoise native delivered in September with Dog Person and it’s another piece that continues the trend of exposing his multi-faceted personality through a myriad of characters.

In the past, we have routinely seen Cream Caviar wreak havoc with his antics. The latest effort sees Cream cross into the world of local band Kean Wolf for the video for ‘Street Lights‘. Directed by fellow Soft Boy Kojaque it sees Kean’s grizzly alter ego howling over a Halloween heartbreak.

We caught up with Kean about the inspiration behind the new video:

What films informed your thought process for the new video?

Me and Kev wanted me to have a kind of Teen Wolf mid-transformation look. I love shite 80s films and there’s one, Valley Girl with Nicholas Cage, that was in my head when I was writing that song, writing a lot of the songs on Dog Person actually. It’s shocking. The werewolf up looking at the moon is probably as close as we got to referencing that.

What is it about projecting certain aspects of your personality into these characters that appeals to you?

To be honest, it can just feel a bit awkward performing your own song for a music video I think, so there’s great comfort in humour for me, or in the bizarre or the surreal. I straight up wouldn’t have been comfortable doing a music video for this song not dressed as a werewolf. And it’s just fun. It’s like Halloween all the time.

There’s some connection between the half animal half human characters in the video for ‘EMMA‘ and ‘Street Lights‘, what was the process of bringing the conceptual element of the project together, visually speaking?

Me and Kev knew we were gonna do the wolf head thing for EMMA because we wanted to get across this bastard energy of the Dog Person character. And then when we were thinking of Street Lights and how to link everything together, the natural first thought was “WOLF PROSTETHICS”. If the idea is funny to us, then it’s a usually a goer. I suppose if you were into dissecting the minutiae of these videos, you could say that the wolf in this video looks a bit more like me because this song has a bit more of the human side than the dog. But is it that deep?

Can we expect more from Cream Caviar in the future?

I think he’s done his promotional duties and more for this project cycle now at this point. If other’s aren’t sick of him than I certainly am. He’s very focused on training his young son Bono’s hurling team for the foreseeable so I don’t anticipate him answering my calls for a while…