Synopsis

Future Bible Heroes turn an ordinary garden party into a deadpan, surreal celebration. Claudia Gonson and Christopher Ewen join Stephin Merritt among bright summer greenery, playful costumes, oddball props, and deliberately awkward party behavior. Merritt remains notably calm and dour while the world around him grows increasingly whimsical, creating a visual contrast with the song's buoyant synth-pop. The clip captures the track's mixture of pleasure, absurdity, romantic disappointment, and unease without attempting to illustrate every detail of its event-filled nightlife narrative.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video accompanied "Living, Loving, Partygoing," the lead single from the album *Partygoing*, released by Merge Records in 2013.

• It was the first Future Bible Heroes video made with the full trio of Stephin Merritt, Claudia Gonson, and Christopher Ewen.

• The garden-party setting reflects the song's tension between cheerful surfaces and darker, more ambivalent ideas about nightlife, romance, and excess.

• Merritt's restrained, almost motionless presence provides the video's central visual joke: the more eccentric the surroundings become, the less he appears to participate emotionally.

• The song's party anecdotes were drawn from real experiences shared by the group, including events involving John Waters and a party in Provincetown.

• Christopher Ewen said that the song began when Merritt sang an idea into his voicemail, before it developed into the finished Future Bible Heroes track.

• The album's title and party concept were inspired in part by the B-52's 1981 release *Party Mix!*, although Merritt's version turns the idea toward aging, loss, despair, and dark humor.