August 2007: Ill Semantics, International Flannel, Jonny Love, Odessa, Pearl, PNC

The emo kitchen scissors, Medieval knights, solid gold, the drinking glasses got the moves, a demolished city

Ill Semantics featuring Adeaze “Take It Slow”

“Take It Slow” avoids slow-jam cliches and instead creates a world of animated cartoon drinking glasses that get up to mischief at night in the kitchen. It’s very cute, with the Ill Semantics glasses playing around with the noughts and crosses board, even doing some turntabling with a salt and pepper set.

Director: Mark Arona

International Flannel “Getaway”

This video has the same concept as Zed’s “Oh! Daisy” – a boy discovers that a magical Viewmaster can make the 3D images come to life. But instead of a manic pixie dream girl, this younger kid gets some Medieval knights fighting in a forest (yep, it was only a matter of time before the historic dress-up nerds appeared in a music video) and a ’00s rock band causing trouble in his house. And unexpectedly, the odd combination of the knights and a psychedelic guitar break makes the song feel much much longer than its 3:18. So prog.

Director: Gareth Van Niekerk
Nga Taonga Sound & Vision

Jonny Love “Not The First, Not The Last”

This video is set in Christchurch and much of it involves Jonny Love performing on a central city rooftop with random city buildings behind him. Except they’re not all that random now. As it happens, the video features three significant buildings that are no longer standing, all due to earthquake damage: the CTV building (collapsed), Radio Network House (imploded), and St Paul’s Church (demolished). Even the the building on which Jonny is standing has been demolished. A previously pleasant music video becomes so sad.

Director: Logan McMillan

Odessa “Good Enough”

This video begins with an alarming couple (Candy and the Captain) enthusing about Odessa’s live energy. Then the song kicks off, presented as being part of a show called 24 Krt Hits, a mash-up of pop music shows from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. It has a similar “lounge act gone wrong” vibe that the Front Lawn had, the thrilling sense that they’re only just managing to hold it together.

Director: Derek Thunders

Pearl “Life Is Beautiful”

Pearl make very ambitious videos. This one involves father of a teenage girl. I think it’s implying that he lost his wife and another daughter in a terrorist bombing. So he’s troubled and his surviving daughter is troubled. She’s so troubled that she tries to cut herself with kitchen scissors. But, as Pearl say, life is beautiful, so they find hope at the end.

By the way, this video might only have 5000 views on YouTube, but Pearl have over 1.4 million hits on the preview clip for their song “All I Need”. Why? Because it features a vibrator (and a cucumber!), which seems to attract people expecting a different search result for “pearl vibrator”.

Director: Patrick Gillies
Nga Taonga Sound & Vision

PNC “Memory Lane” – lost

I’d normally assume there was no video made for this song, but yet there is an entry for it at the Film Archive. The song is a big, nostalgic look back at PNC’s childhood. Is he too young to be getting nostalgic? Nah, when you’re in your 20s and you suddenly realise you’re old enough to remember the good old days, reminiscing then becomes a new and highly enjoyable hobby. ’90s kids will know what I mean! Listen to the track here.

Nga Taonga Sound & Vision

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