Video Rewind 07.11.2014

PHOX “Kingfisher”

PHOX’s debut album is available for purchase in the US. Europe, you’re going to have to wait for September 1st to get it. Their latest single off the album is “Kingfisher”, and they debuted the video this week. The bed is a temple of sorts. We rest in it, sometimes we go so far as to seek refuge in it. We laugh there, we cry there, when we’re ill we may smear our boogers over it. It’s always there. And it takes us places. We dream there, sometimes while sleeping, other times while daydreaming. It’s where we look ahead to what we’re doing tomorrow, and replay what went over today. It is in many ways, our fortress. The song lyrically deals with having a crush on someone and developing a fanciful idea of what your relationship would be like. It’s perfect in so many ways, but in reality you have no idea what the person is really like. As such, you come to the realization that it’s all just make believe. And here we see a woman dragging her bed frame out into nature. She is taking her bed to places it isn’t supposed to go, but she’s daydreaming, so here goes. She imagines herself in a white dress on her bed, with mattress, dressed in white as well in the middle of the woods. The PHOX bandmates are here as well, also dressed in white. Everything is wonderful as they carry her around atop the bed. Yet, when the video ends it goes back to her, no fancy dressing, sitting on the bedframe and looking at the bandmates as they sit in the tall grass eating sandwiches. Daydreams can be beautiful, but they can also crumble in the palm of life because they are so wafer thin. I don’t think we get out in the world as much as people used to, dressed as though a special occasion were going on. No, we have special clothing and gear for hiking. Watch this video, and then decide to dress in your Sunday best and go have a picnic the way your ancestors used to.

Jungle “Time”

July 14th will bring the release of Jungle’s debut self-titled album. The title track has a video that was released this week. In it, we see a middle aged white man sitting in a living room decorated mostly with Jungle merchandise. You can see it on the walls next to the plants, or hanging next to the shelves, upon which is sitting an old boombox. He’s got an Adidas shirt on, Adidas sneakers, some slacks and a blazer jacket. He gets up and shimmies his way towards the camera and then off screen. We go back to the chair. Now there’s an elderly black man, also sporting Adidas gear and a blazer jacket. When we next see them, they are in a school gymnasium. They eye each other up, and look set for a fight. It’s funny to see them acting this way, the one with thinning gray hair, and the other with greying hair. Then, they get into it and have a dance off. They move pretty fluidly given their age and then it’s all brought back to what the video is about. We get a nice presentation with some banners made for Jungle. This act is about getting people up and moving, no matter the age.

Royal Blood “Figure It Out”

Royal Blood’s latest video for “Figure It Out” is all about perspective. With a red tint, the video opens up with a woman walking in the foodcourt of a mall. She seems to be clearing the area as customers are exiting in haste. She’s just picking at food left on the tables. When the tint switches to blue, we see what is probably a blood stain on her shirt. Couple that with the fact that she’s barefoot, and it’s a bit alarming of a situation. No one seeks to help her, as they assume she’s a crazy person who’s just killed someone else. Security chases her, and the tint keeps switching between blue and red. We see the signs in the background look different depending on what color washes the screen. We also see a caution sign with this woman’s face on it. She seems to be a danger. A man in a white t-shirt comes into the mall and is looking for her. She walks over to him and they embrace, only for the screen to go from red to blue and we see that she has stabbed him. We also see a sign that shows her picture and says she’s been kidnapped. We go back to the beginning of the scenario, where the woman busts out of the back of a van having loosed her restraints. She enters the mall and is in shock from the trauma of her ordeal. When her kidnapper comes back to the van he panics and scurries into the mall to look for her. In the end, he probably gets what he deserves.

Christopher Owens “Nothing More Than Everything To Me”

With a soon to be released album A New Testament out, Christopher Owens debuted a video for “Nothing More Than Everything To Me”. The video features Owens performing at a middle school dance, but it features around a couple of kids. The boy looks like a younger version of Owens himself, while the girl is the brunette he’s got his eyes on. The boy version of Owens, not grown up Owens. The girl seems to be a little self conscious about herself because she’s not the pretty popular girl. She’s far from ugly, but we can all remember how the caste system in school worked. Still, when she sees little Owens at the dance, she brightens right up. They dance the night away. And that’s how it should feel in a relationship. You should be with your best friend, the person who is more than everything to you, and who you are more than everything to. It’s true, we can learn a lot from children that we forget as we get older.

Galvanic Elephants “We Are Together”

In the latest video for “We Are Together” by Galvanic Elephants, we see a relationship that comes about after two people see eye to eye. A young woman is writing in her diary, wanting to be accepted by some other young women. We see them playing croquet, and having tea together. All the while our first young woman has tricks played on her, like removing the chair from under her while she sits down. You get the sense there is some hazing going on here. The other women find the diary and read it, once discovered tearing the pages out of it. They laugh at our fourth wheel here. Eventually they tie her up in the woods, and the ring leader approaches her with a knife. She cuts the ropes and lets her leave, as though now she is initiated into their world. She starts to run and makes it to a road that she begins traveling down. The others come out of the woods, and the ring leader runs up to her, grasps her hand, and smiling they continue down the road. This could signify that they have come to see how absurd and rude the behavior was, and now all is forgiven. Or it could be the sign of a narcissistic sociopath realizing that she may be losing a source of flattery and playing nice to win her back. It’s all part of the training process.

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