STRUGGLES WITH SYNTAX – JUNG DREAMS (VIDEO)

“History tells us that squirrels exist, not only in our minds but also doing the parkour and drinking cheap whisky at charity galas and social events.” – Dominic Sullivan, director.

Striking the proverbial iron while it’s hot, London quartet Struggles With Syntax has released today their music video for Petrichor’s lead single, “Jung Dreams.”

Shot by Dominic Sullivan on a budget that consisted mainly of strong beer, edited by the band’s drummer Rory O’Connor and starring lead singer Jo Llewellyn-Jones, “Jung Dreams” is about growing up, the inevitable leaving behind of people and dreams, and the kind of betrayal that that represents.

“It’s also about looking back on a feral youth, wanting to relive it despite it not being in any way rose-tinted in your memory, but knowing you can’t and wouldn’t be able to handle it if you could” Llewellyn-Jones also divulges.

Featuring Mr. Thomas – a “creepy, baby-faced squirrel thing” – the music video follows an intimate dinner between the band’s vocalist and Mr. Thomas, which gets boozier further into the video, and therefore inhibitions are a lot looser.

Jo’s rantings towards Mr. Thomas, therefore, become a lot more heated and the room for interpretation in the video becomes more expansive.

Is Mr. Thomas a friend, a foe, or even real? Is the food poisoned or does chewing an unpeeled banana really cause that reaction? Why does Mr. Thomas eat raw garlic and does it actually pair well with whisky? If you peel a banana, is it still truly a banana?

You can now pre-save Petrichor on Spotify from today, by visiting the link here.

The Genesis of “Jung Dreams”

“Jung Dreams” did not emerge from a vacuum. It was born during a period of intense transition for Struggles With Syntax, as the band found themselves caught between the fading echoes of their formative years and the stark realities of adulthood. The song was written in a cramped rehearsal space in Hackney, where the walls were damp with condensation and the air thick with the smell of cheap lager and burnt toast. According to guitarist Sam Whitmore, the initial riff came to him during a late-night session that was supposed to be about working on another track entirely. “I was just messing around with a detuned guitar, trying to find something that felt like a memory you can’t quite grab,” he recalls. “Then Jo started humming this melody over it, and suddenly we had the bones of a song that felt like a confession.”

The lyrics, penned by Llewellyn-Jones, are a patchwork of fragmented images: stolen bikes, grazed knees, the taste of petrol from a siphoned tank, and the hollow ache of watching friends drift into different lives. The title itself is a nod to the Jungian concept of the shadow self—the parts of ourselves we suppress or leave behind as we grow. “It’s about the dreams you have when you’re young, the ones that feel so real you could touch them,” Llewellyn-Jones explains. “Then you wake up one day and realise they’ve been replaced by spreadsheets and rent payments. But they’re still there, lurking in your subconscious, like Mr. Thomas.”

The band spent months refining the track, layering dissonant guitar lines over a driving rhythm section that alternates between frantic and languid. The result is a song that feels both urgent and nostalgic, a sonic tug-of-war between past and present. It was this tension that made “Jung Dreams” the obvious choice for the lead single from Petrichor, the band’s third studio album, which explores similar themes of memory, loss, and the impossibility of returning home.

Behind the Lens: Dominic Sullivan’s Vision

Dominic Sullivan, the director behind the “Jung Dreams” video, is no stranger to the band’s world. He had previously shot live footage for Struggles With Syntax and had developed a shorthand with the members that allowed for a fluid, almost improvisational approach to filming. “The brief was simple: make it feel like a fever dream you’d have after eating too much cheese before bed,” Sullivan says with a laugh. “But also make it strangely tender. Jo and Mr. Thomas have this bizarre chemistry that’s both unsettling and endearing.”

Shot over two days in a borrowed flat in South London, the video was made on a shoestring budget that, as the existing text notes, consisted mainly of strong beer. “We spent more on Polish lager than on props,” Sullivan admits. “The table, the chairs, the dodgy lighting—it was all scavenged or donated. The only thing we actually bought was the raw garlic, and that was because Jo insisted on authenticity.”

Sullivan’s approach was to let the camera linger on the small, uncomfortable moments: the way Mr. Thomas’s plastic eyes seem to follow Jo around the room, the slow disintegration of the meal as the whisky takes hold, the sudden shifts from laughter to aggression. “I wanted it to feel like you’re a guest at this dinner party that’s going horribly wrong, but you can’t leave,” he explains. “There’s no escape from the weirdness, and that’s the point.”

The Enigma of Mr. Thomas

Mr. Thomas, the “creepy, baby-faced squirrel thing” that co-stars in the video, has become something of a mascot for the band. But his origins are shrouded in mystery. According to bassist Emily Hart, Mr. Thomas was discovered in a charity shop in Margate, buried under a pile of moth-eaten cardigans and broken VHS tapes. “He was just sitting there, staring at me with those dead eyes,” she recalls. “I knew immediately he had to be in the video. He had this energy—like he’d seen things.”

The band has been deliberately vague about what Mr. Thomas represents. Some fans have speculated that he is a metaphor for childhood innocence corrupted by adulthood. Others believe he is a manifestation of the id, the primal, instinctual part of the psyche that society forces us to repress. Llewellyn-Jones, for his part, offers a more pragmatic interpretation: “He’s a squirrel. He eats garlic. He drinks whisky. What more do you need to know?”

Regardless of his symbolic weight, Mr. Thomas has taken on a life of his own. He has appeared in subsequent live performances, perched on an amplifier like a silent judge, and has even inspired a line of unofficial merchandise. “People send us photos of their own creepy squirrel things,” Hart says. “It’s become a whole community of people who find comfort in the unsettling. I think that’s beautiful.”

Filming the Dinner Scene: Chaos and Catharsis

The centrepiece of the video is, of course, the intimate dinner between Jo and Mr. Thomas. What appears on screen as a carefully choreographed descent into madness was, in reality, a chaotic and largely unscripted affair. “We had a rough outline, but most of it was just Jo reacting to Mr. Thomas in real time,” Sullivan explains. “We’d pour him another whisky, and he’d start monologuing about the futility of existence or the correct way to peel a banana. It was like watching a method actor lose his grip.”

The food, too, played a crucial role in the unfolding drama. The unpeeled banana that Jo chews with visible disgust was, in fact, a last-minute addition after the original prop—a bowl of cold spaghetti—was deemed too conventional. “We wanted something that would make people uncomfortable,” Llewellyn-Jones says. “There’s something inherently wrong about eating a banana with the skin on. It’s a violation of the natural order.”

Mr. Thomas’s consumption of raw garlic was similarly deliberate. “Garlic is a purifier, a protector against evil,” Hart notes. “But eaten raw, it’s also an act of aggression. It burns. It lingers. It’s the perfect metaphor for the kind of truths we’re forced to swallow as we grow up.”

The video’s most memorable moment—Jo’s explosive rant about betrayal and lost dreams—was captured in a single take, after the band had consumed a significant amount of the aforementioned strong beer. “I don’t remember exactly what I said,” Llewellyn-Jones admits. “But when I watched it back, I realised it was the most honest thing I’d ever put on film. That’s the power of whisky and a creepy squirrel.”

Editing and Sound Design: Crafting the Fever Dream

Once the footage was in the can, the task of shaping it into a coherent narrative fell to drummer Rory O’Connor, who took on the role of editor. “I wanted the pacing to mirror the song’s structure,” O’Connor explains. “The verses are these quiet, tense moments where nothing much happens, but you can feel the pressure building. Then the chorus hits, and it’s like a dam breaking. So I cut the video to match that ebb and flow.”

O’Connor employed a range of techniques to enhance the video’s dreamlike quality. He slowed down certain shots to a crawl, creating a sense of time stretching and warping. He layered in subtle audio distortions—the clink of glasses, the scrape of cutlery, the low hum of a refrigerator—to ground the surreal imagery in a mundane reality. “I wanted it to feel like you’re half-asleep at a dinner party, and everything is just slightly off,” he says.

The colour grading was also crucial. Sullivan had shot the footage on a mix of digital and Super 8 film, giving it a grainy, nostalgic texture. O’Connor pushed this further in post-production, desaturating the colours until they looked almost sepia-toned, then punctuating the frame with flashes of sickly green and jaundiced yellow. “It’s the colour palette of a hangover,” he jokes. “Or a bad dream you can’t wake up from.”

Reception and Legacy

Since its release, “Jung Dreams” has garnered a cult following among fans of the band and beyond. The video has been praised for its unsettling atmosphere, its dark humour, and its willingness to embrace the absurd. Critics have drawn comparisons to the works of David Lynch and the early films of Peter Greenaway, though the band is quick to downplay such lofty associations. “We’re just four people who like weird stuff,” Hart says. “If people find meaning in it, that’s great. But we’re not trying to be profound.”

The video has also sparked a wave of fan theories, with online forums dissecting every frame for hidden clues. Some viewers have suggested that Mr. Thomas is a stand-in for the band’s former guitarist, who left under acrimonious circumstances. Others believe the entire video is a metaphor for the music industry’s tendency to chew up and spit out young artists. Llewellyn-Jones, for his part, remains characteristically evasive: “People see what they want to see. That’s the beauty of art. Or maybe Mr. Thomas is just a squirrel who likes garlic.”

Ultimately, “Jung Dreams” stands as a testament to the band’s willingness to take risks and embrace the strange. It is a video that rewards repeated viewings, revealing new layers of meaning with each watch. And it serves as a fitting introduction to Petrichor, an album that grapples with the same thorny questions of identity, memory, and the passage of time.

Related Videos

If you enjoyed “Jung Dreams,” be sure to explore more from Struggles With Syntax and other artists in the Videos section. You might also appreciate the surreal energy of DUHKQUNT – THE CATASTROPHE (MUSIC VIDEO), or the playful chaos of MURINA – STUFF GALORE (VIDEO). For a full archive of visual work, visit the Music Videos category.