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 Welcome to VISUAL STIMULI , a critical perspective on the eyeball-friendly side of music: the humble and oft-overlooked Music Video with MICHAEL PINCOTT. Now showing on your favoured televisual device or YouTube platform…
REST MY CHEMISTRY – Interpol
Director: Blip Boutique
The song: One of the mellower tracks to come out of last year’s Our Love To Admire, this track recalls the moody chamber pop of the second half of Antics. Banks sings with suitable apathy while Kessler frames lithe guitar lines.
The video: You know how you get those visualisers on your computer, the ones that make pretty pictures while supposedly matching the music? This is basically a super duper version of that – a nice series of graphics. There’s a wireframe city that pans out to a wireframe Earth, and some connecting lines that appear to be constellations, linked by more lines that are constantly expanding and detracting.
Stimulatory value? Some good points and some bad points. Bad because it’s a lazy concept, and because the graphics are contextually detached from the music. The best music videos become inextricable from their songs once you’ve seen the two together. Unfortunately aside from the occasional synchronisation of sound and image there is nothing about this video that suggests it belongs to this song, or even to this band. It does however fit the mood of the song, dark and spacious, and the graphics employed are certainly fancy. The beginning of the video is its most effective moment, tiny spots of light corresponding to the distinctly Interpol guitar intro, and as the other instruments combine the image on screen explodes satisfactorily. It’s a shame Interpol haven’t been able to recapture the simplicity and elegance of the Obstacle 1 video. Source that director!
***
CHECK OUT THE CLIP HERE
 SOUL ON FIRE – Spiritualized
Director: Jim Canty
The song: An evolution of the Brit-pop ballad that in the wrong hands might have gone astray, but Jason Pierce and some epic strings keep this one well afloat.
The video: Pierce is all dressed up in silver, the video cutting between him in a hospital room and an icy wasteland.
Stimulatory value: This video isn’t particularly ambitious, but luckily it’s not boring either. The juxtaposition between the hospital room and the chilly looking alternative is an interesting one, and the shots of syringes and drip machines add a cold, clinical depression to proceedings. It offsets the hopeful message of the song and makes the whole thing seem rather sad. It seems to be closely related to Pierce’s case of severe pneumonia from a few years ago in which he spent an extended amount of time in hospital. The beginning and ending shots are the same, Pierce lying down on the ice with the shot rotated to accommodate Pierce so it looks as if he is hugging a wall. The camera cutting seamlessly between Pierce doing the same movement in both settings is very effective. It’s an understated video that does a good job of supporting the song.
***½
CHECK OUT THE CLIP HERE
 RADIO HEART – The Futureheads
Director: James Appleton
The song: Catchy Brit-pop-punk led by Ross Millard’s distinctive vocals and angular guitar stylings. He wants a girl with a radio heart, apparently.
The video: A fairly straightforward video with some nice touches. There’s a not-so-subtle radio theme throughout, the video beginning with a miscellaneous hand turning a dial. Lines dotted with radio frequencies run through the band and they play the song.
Stimulatory value: One of the interesting effects employed here is what I might call the ‘cut in twain’ effect, with bits of bodies and heads and limbs being separated and shifted around. Sort of like pulling the head off your Ken doll and putting it on the Barbie doll instead. Hot. It’s a typically modern sort of video and is a comfortable fit for the song it has been partnered with. There are several closeups of eyes that are a little disorienting and unnecessary, and in further defiance of subtlety a girl shows up whom we can only assume is in possession of a radio heart. A radio tower with cartoonish energy waves coming off it is a nice touch. It’s a competent video that doesn’t try particularly hard.
**½
CHECK OUT THE CLIP HERE
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