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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…
 BAND OF HORSES – Is There A Ghost
(Director: Brian Savelson) The song: Uplifting opener from last year’s Cease To Begin, builds up nicely from the reverb-soaked vocals of Ben Bridwell to a satisfying guitar explosion. The video: Hooded ninja-like girl sneaks into people’s houses and steals people’s pillows as they sleep, and keeps them all for herself. What a bitch. Everybody wakes up without their pillows and panic ensues. A mass pillow fight breaks out. The ninja girl sneaks away, her pillow stash now lost, and sneaks into one more house to steal one last pillow. Her victim wakes up, they share an awkward moment, and ninja girl leaves. Stimulatory value: It’s always nice when a video has a story to tell, no matter how simple or strange it might be. Why not have a pillow-stealing ninja girl? A few effective techniques are rendered, like the ninja girl sampling all the various pillows in overlaid single shots and the building and dwindling pile of pillows. The slow motion shots at the end of the video of people being clobbered with pillows are pretty amusing. The way the song builds as the pillows are stolen for it to culminate with the climax of the song and the pillow fight is very effective and helps get the story across. A very simple idea executed well. ***½ www.youtube.com/watch?v=JK716RqoUms INTERPOL – No I In Threesome (Director: Patrick Daughter) The song: Interpol with another cheeky innuendo-laden track. Paul Banks encourages the listener to give something new a try. If you say that it’s okay, Paul… The video: The band plays in a dilapidated old house. Meaningful shots of broken furniture ensue. Also a man who looks bit like Santa appears for no reason. Then things start to burn down, and a bird gets caught in a curtain. Poor thing. Stimulatory value? A little bit too safe, but there are some nice touches that suit the track. The colour is all but washed out from the video, which I guess serves to match Interpol’s wardrobe. There are plenty of mirrors, some used to tactfully fit more band members into the shot, and are also used as magical portal between rooms. The initial slow panning shot is good, but I consider the teleporting through the mirror trick to be cheating. A sort of hanging dead antelope thing makes a cameo, presumably referencing the National Geographic themed art for Our Love To Admire. Excitement increases when it looks like the house will catch ablaze or collapse or something, but nothing really happens at all. **½ www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDm4Vs7xl6U NICK CAVE & THE BLACK SEEDS – Dig!!! Lazarus, Dig!!! (Directed by Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard) The song: Very catchy, very smooth, leaving the viscera of Grinderman to one side but the fantastic faux-sleaze of Cave’s baritone, a great revolving guitar riff and Cave’s very expressive half-spoken vocals pervade in the best possible way. The video: Nick Cave does the perpetual walk towards the camera, with a sort of half dance in his step, while backgrounds shift between a surreal city nightscape and the Bad Seeds grooving away. It’s Cave’s physical performance that makes this work really well. Stimulatory value: The video is impressively a single long take, Cave always at the forefront. Cave does a great job at injecting humour into the clip with his exaggerated walk, his actions when he sings, and just the overall Nick Cave aura. The monochromatic city backgrounds are very effective in conveying the mood of the track, and injects the cold mood Cave & The Bad Seeds are known for while Cave preserves the dark humour . His magnificent moustache doesn’t hurt either. It’s a very simple video, but wholly entertaining and perfect for the song. **** www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kV5XkBQsKU
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