My last article referenced the late 2000s, and I won’t stop with the comparisons now, because the music video for Paycheque’s “Generic Actress” has plenty of throwback vibes. Who would think that living through another catastrophic worldwide economic situation would give people nostalgia?
Anyway, despite their English-spelled name, Paycheque comes from the City of Angels, and features the duo of St. Louis filmmaker and musician Alison Goldfarb and Montreal’s Jackson MacIntosh (of the bands Drugdealer and TOPS). They have come up through chaos: Their first performance occurred in February 2020, just weeks before the first wave of COVID shut everything down. Retreating to a garage, the pair bonded over their love for sophisti-pop, italo disco, and noodling around with synthesizers.
Therefore, a lot of Paycheque’s vibe centers around making the best of not-so-great situations, and their self-titled debut album (out 6/12/26) addresses the woes of their home: Wildfires and ICE, layoffs in the entertainment industry, and the general impermanence of living in LA, where everything’s as solid as the Santa Monica sand when the waves wash in.
Goldfarb and MacIntosh come at those issues with a can of gloss and a zeal for 80s pop, both present on “Generic Actress”, the lead single from the upcoming album. Life in LA means coming into things with expectations that may never pan out: You move with dreams of making it as an actor, an executive, or a supermodel, but years down the road find yourself an extra, a middle manager, or an assistant makeup artist on Drag Race. And while all of those things still have value, they may not line up with the grand life goals each of us has growing dust in our souls.
The new single puts a shiny ‘80s New Wave spin on this concept, boiling it down to the tried-and-true mantra: Fake it ‘til you make it. “New name, new dress, new hairdo / Would you take this endless weekend or a dreary Monday afternoon?” Though life in LA may wear many souls down – especially in this day and age – those who fight through the chaos to keep the dream alive might just make it after all. I spent a lot of time in New York, and Sinatra’s mantra for that big city rings just as true for Los Angeles: If you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere.
Check out the music video for “Generic Actress” below, in which you can see Paycheque’s penchant for retro stylings beyond just the music. The Mini-DV tape fuzz and montage of clips of people having fun in arcades, karaoke booths, clubs, and living rooms could fool you into thinking the band filmed this in 2007, just before everything went bad. (Then again, everything was pretty bad already. We just didn’t know. Maybe we didn’t want to know.)
Written by Will Sisskind
