Deluxe Boy was an earlier incarnation of the band that was to become known as Dukes. “Shadowboxer” was their only NZ On Air funded video. It’s a slick track, reminiscent of mid-’90s Britpop with some turn-of-the-millennium acoustic guitar thrown in, along with slightly disturbing lyrics.
It’s based around a young guy who wakes up and discovers he’s entangled with electrical cables. Deluxe Boy are performing on a TV that keeps playing when he unplugs it. Alarmed by this, he follows a trail of cables, which leads him through abandoned warehouses, between shipping containers, and past graffiti walls. The mystery cable-layer sure has an eye for photogenic locations.
While this is going on, we also see the band performing in an elegant room. Much of the band footage concentrates on them singing the vocal harmonies, which means lots of close-ups of dudes emoting into a microphone.
Our hero follows the cables to the band’s room, only they’re suddenly not there. He finds the end of the cable and suddenly he’s broadcast on the telly back at his flat. And it’s there that he wakes up on the couch, again entangled in cables.
I feel like the video is trying really hard to be of a certain quality but it’s just not there. Both the plot and its execution are flawed and the video ends up looking a lot cheaper than it sounds.
Best bit: the hero’s hamtastic shocked facial expressions.
Next… the lucrative Asian market.