No Screen Necessary
Music videos may once have been seen as either a mere visual accompaniment or — back in the days when people actually paid for music — an ad for the song.
They can sometimes be MUCH more than both.
You know that the video has created a life — and value — of its own when just hearing the song’s notes immediately conjures up the video’s images; no screen necessary. You can multiply this impact many times over when it’s still there decades after both first appeared.
This isn’t the norm of course but those that achieve it necessarily command a place in music fans’ affections. Here are 4 that have done so in mine.
David Gray/Alibi
If there’s something strikingly cinematic here it’s because the video was adapted from an award winning short film. ‘Jane Lloyd’ was directed by a duo known as Happy and the film won the 2005 London Film Festival Classic Shorts Award. It’s easy to see why.
It’s not always so easy to avoid averting your eyes because, over its four and a half minutes, the images reflect the dissolution of a life that starts with such positivity. An uneasy cocktail of highs and hope (“All night buzz on a line……Wrecks my head every time…….Where’d it all go wrong?”)
The gut wrenching impact of the original film is built upon by the addition of Gray’s beautiful song (from his ‘Life In Slow Motion’ album); the result is much more than the sum of the parts.
It’s harrowing viewing and once may be more than enough. In fact, the side-by-side subtlety and brutality of the images merge so effectively with the plaintive musical notes that its haunting impact on you may simply not be your choice.
Crowded House/Weather With You
It’s the spotted dog splashing in the water, the pedaloes and the stripy surf board hanging out the back of the car. It’s the bikes, the picnics and singing ‘Stormy Weather.’ It’s horse riding on the beach. It’s innocence.
An ‘up’ song (despite its lyrical introspection in places) ascends to something much more when the blue sky images are front and centre.
Filmed on the Bellarine Peninsula in Melbourne and directed by MacGregor Knox, this is the look of pure joy — of friends, freedom and time to spare.
Petrol heads even get to stare at Nick Seymour’s T-Bird convertible.
Whatever the weather outside or the mood inside, this video lets me take the sunshine and skies of my choice.
Counting Crows/Round Here
The sound of uncertainty — of people searching for their place (“round here, we’re carving out our names”) — has a melancholy and a restlessness. It has a look too and here director Mark Neale nails it.
Buildings crash to the ground and multiple clock faces whir at warp speed. A man counts out steps in the windswept distance whilst singer Adam Duritz tells the story of Maria (who “came from Nashville with a suitcase in her hand, she said she’d like to meet a boy who looks like Elvis.”)
Bonnie Aarons (Mulholland Drive, Silver Linings Playbook) plays Maria, trudging the streets (“like she’s walking on a wire in the circus”) with her suitcase or a placard to the general indifference or confusion of passers-by.
It’s the sight of people “more than just a little misunderstood” running and diving towards something that they might just be better turning away from. But how do any of us know?
Buffalo Tom/Wiser
It’s a slow motion walk really. But it’s not. It’s separation and the frustration of not being able to figure out what that important other person is thinking. It’s dealing with the fact that you can’t handle things but they can (“the apes in the evergreens, the grape leaves and jasmine tea, comforts you without me.”)
It’s needing to understand — “I am none the wiser for it all, your voice is shaky on the telephone call.”
Directors James and Alex keep the focus on Devon Odessa (My So Called Life) as she stumbles homeward. She’s preoccupied, sometimes laughing to herself, sometimes almost jaunty, sometimes confused as she breaks into a run.
The band (Bill Janovitz, Chris Colbourn and Tom Maginnis) appear around the edges but the camera only has one gaze. There might just be a denouement. It’s just as likely that there won’t — or can’t — be.
