2013 – Page 22 – 5000 Ways to Love You

Lucid 3 “Shiver”

The “Shiver” video begins with a stark scene. Film in high-contrast black and white, the action starts in a large, old warehouse, glistening with wetness. As the camera moved in to the centre of the warehouse, there’s a large platform where the band stand.

They’re not positioned like they would be at a gig. Victoria stands alone near the front, with the bass player behind her to the right and the drummer further behind to the left. It’s very artistic positioning and a pleasant change from the standard gig positions used in so many videos.

Like the previous single “Curious”, the song has acoustic guitar in the verses and crunchy rock guitar in the chorus. But unlike the “Curious” video, this vid reflects the song’s changes in feeling with more dramatic angles and editing.

It’s a simple, stylish video focusing on Lucid 3’s talent as a live band without resorting to the fake gig video technique. Instead we see the trio performing; no rock faces, just the song.

Best bit: the close-ups of Victoria’s awesome shiny steel guitar.

Director: Alex Sutherland, Michael Lonsdale
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… bed time.

K’Lee “Broken Wings”

After having some success with his own solo career, Matty J Ruys then turned his talents to a behind-the-scenes role as a pop svengali. He needed a tuneful teen to transform into a popstar and discovered 17-year-old jeans shop worker Kaleena McNabb. She was transformed into the popstar K’Lee, though now in her role as a Mai FM DJ she goes by the more mature handle K-Lee.

K’Lee had a run of four top-20 songs, and was apparently the first female New Zealand artist to have four top-20 singles off one album. There was always a bit of backlash from people who felt that K’Lee was a bit rubbish, mainly due to being an attractive young pop singer who was suddenly enjoying hit singles without having “paid her dues”. Woteva. She made fun pop. It makes people happy. It still makes me happy. So let’s delve into the first video of K’Lee.

“Broken Wings” is a cover of the 1985 Mr Mister song. It’s actually way better than the original, with fresh beats, oriental violin motifs and an R&B break in the middle. There’s an article at NZ Musician that looks at the production of the song.

There’s some money behind this video. Directed by Greg Riwai (last seen here with Salmonella Dub’s “Johnny”), it’s shot in a fancy house and uses fancy digital effects, so Universal were obviously wanting to launch K’Lee with maximum impact as a serious popstress.

The video begins with K’Lee phoning up her ex-boyfriend – and we see another woman sitting on his couch. All he manages is a “hello” before K’Lee hangs up. She’s obviously a bit stressed, so goes over to her bedroom turntables and scratches away her sorrows. The camera slowly pans across and we discover there are two K’Lee – one scratching, the other sulking.

The rest of the video is basically multiple K’Lees mooching around the house. And it made me wonder. What if actually there were several K’Lees. What if one K’Lee started dating the guy, then the other ones wanted to get involved. And at first it was hilarious, like “The Parent Trap”, but then some of the K’Lees got jealous, and the original one was like “Nuh-uh, he’s mine!” And eventually the guy found out and was like “Screw this,” leaving all the K’Lees mopey, depressed and single. Yep, that’s plausible.

All in all, it’s a perfectly good pop video for a good pop song. It seems strange thinking that there was once controversy around K’Lee, but it didn’t stop the song making it to number two in the charts.

Best bit: when the pile of photos transform into doves.

Director: Greg Riwai
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next…warehouse party.

Indigenous Funk Company “Squeeze My Lovin'”

Are you ready for some smooth jams? I thought so. “Squeeze My Lovin'” was Indigenous Funk Company’s third and final funded video. Mai FM supported the single and had it on heavy rotate. I always thought the frequently repeated piano bit sounded like something from an American daytime soap. It’s drama music, but then it seems to be a song about the kind of love that feels like a drama.

The video is a mix of boyband seduction poses and hip hop posturing. It’s low-budget and looks like it was shot with a cheap video camera, with some fake old film textures added to tszuj it up a bit.

Most of the vid is one of the Indigenous duo rapping, singing or staring at the camera. There’s a lot of staring. It’s probably intended to come across as seductive (oh yeah, girl) but when it goes on for too long, it gets really creepy. Like, stop staring me at me, ok!

We barely see the two dudes together (they give us a couple of smouldering looks at the beginning and end of the video), but there are a couple of chicks who show up in the video. At about the halfway point the rapping stops and the ladies start singing (obviously the seduction has worked).

The song goes on about a minute longer than it should, but perhaps this is a buffer. With the song’s seduction powers being so strong, that empty minute is a bit of breathing space, time to decide what to do with that lovin’.

The video ends with a wobbly zoom out of the full moon. Maybe by this stage, it is intended that the lovin’ is well and truly being squeezed so no one’s really going to be paying any attention to poor video production values.

Best bit: the lady singing in front of a glass brick wall, like the reception of a small business.

Next… can you feel her?

High Dependency Unit “Schallblüte”

This is an HDU video. It starts with a circle. It’s shot in black and white and we’re not looking at anything in particular. Suddenly a curtain draws back and we’re on stage with HDU, looking at the band through a fisheye lens.

The stage is draped with white, which gives the impression that they’re performing in a marquee tent, which in turn makes me think of HDU being the entertainment at a wedding. And actually, that would be quite cool. It would be one way of getting rid of your drunk auntie, anyway.

The camera spends a lot of time lingering on the drummer, then well after a minute it moves onto the guitarist, then over for some bass and, oh, go on, some vocals too. Occasionally there’s a hint of an audience, but in my experience of the world of post-rock, bands never involve the audience like traditional rock groups do. So it could actually just be a random group of people lingering off to the side (wedding guests?), rather than fans of HDU.

Things end with a bright burst of light, then a lightbulb switches off. And, ok, that’s how an HDU video ends. Choice.

Note: Roger Shepherd listed “Schallblüte” as one of his five favourite Flying Nun videos, as part of the Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision’s celebration of Flying Nun’s 30th anniversary.

Best bit: the Playboy bunny sticker at the bottom of the bass guitar.

Director: Nigel Bunn
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… it’s smooth time.

Garageland “Gone”

“Gone” was the first single off Garageland’s final album “Scorpio Righting”. And while they never quite reached the levels of international success they were striving for, they could at least pretend. The “Gone” video is set in an alternate reality where Garageland are big in Asia.

I don’t know exactly which Asian country exactly, but signs seem to point to China. The band are performing on a low-budget looking TV show, crammed into a tiny studio. The TV host introduces them (sounding like she’s reading the lines phonetically), and the camera lingers on the all-Asian crew, who look like a bunch of Chinese New Zealanders.

The band perform “Gone” on the tiny stage, with lead singer Jeremy wearing a pair of bogan sunglasses. Perhaps that’s trendy in faux Asia. We also see the lads signing CD singles for a small but excited group of fans (also all Asian). One fan is so excited she lifts up her top and has Jeremy sign her boob. Another fan presents Andrew the guitarist with a foot massaging stick ensuring a “Lost In Translation” kind of “OMG, Azns r weird!” moment.

The band are interviewed backstage, grapple with Pocky, and discover the song is number one, and not only that, they’ve earned a silver record for their efforts.

It all feels like an elaborate fantasy. If Garageland can’t have number one singles and CD signings to groups of adoring fans in New Zealand, then they can at least experience three minutes and 26 seconds of a Shangri-La where all their pop dreams have come true.

Best bit: the cat, a gift from a really tall fan.

Director: Mitchell Hawkes
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… the wedding singer.

Deluxe Boy “Shadowboxer”

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.

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… the lucrative Asian market.

Cassette “Nothing to Do”

Cassette (including Tom Watson of HLAH on guitar) were a Wellington band who described themselves as playing “country / folk / soft / hard / moderate / spritural mantra ROCK!” “Nothing to Do” was their first single, and it’s an laidback indie track.

The online version of the video seems to have been taken from an episode of “Squeeze” via a ’90s web upload. It’s very pixelly and the sound is washy. But it’s enough to give a good impression of the video.

It starts with the drone of a suburban lawn mower cut with the crack of urban static, kicking off what looks like a homemade video with footage shot around Auckland. There’s footage of the band performing at both dark clubs and outdoors at festivals, the band hanging out, urban Auckland streets and coastal landscapes.

The video takes the “nothing to do” lyric and removes it from its bitter context of “one of them has nothing to do with you”. Instead it’s the slacker kind of “nothing to do”, making the video a lazy journey around Auckland. It’s almost like the video equivalent of a contemporary Instagram account – “here are some photos of some cool things I saw around Auckland”.

Best bit: the Vegas Girl on K Road, looking out on everything.

Note: This video is no longer available online.

Next… poor cable handling skills.

The Feelers “Astronaut”

When this video first came out, I saw a making-of item on some youth TV show. This is what I remember: it was filmed at the Mandalay in Auckland, and the big crowd up on the balcony was achieved through digital copy and paste.

The sound is more than reminiscent of “Where is my Mind” by the Pixies. And while the Feelers did have a Pixies sound on tracks from their first album, “Where is my Mind” was also hot from its inclusion in the 1999 film “Fight Club”.

So anyway, the Mandalay is full of fans of the Kiwi Pixies Experience and there on stage are the Feelers, rocking out with such powerful force that it creates a wind-machine like effect on the audience’s hair.

But that’s not the limits of their rock power. Soon the ceiling of the venue starts to spin, opening a portal to another dimension. What’s up there? Anal-probing aliens? No, it’s giant version of the Feelers, dressed up like they’re going to a punk-themed fancy dress party. It looks like they went through several $1 jars of off-brand hair gel from Rendell’s.

The band aren’t sure what to make of this, but they realise they can’t out-rock their 50ft doppelgangers and so leap into the other dimension. From there they gleefully watch the giant James do an ill-fated stage dive.

The lesson learned from this video is that a little bit of the Feelers is ok, but too much Feelers will just end in tears. Also: only the Pixies can do the Pixies.

Best bit: The wild eyes of James Feelers as he surveys the bizarre goings-on while keeping his rock cool.

Next… upsizing a shipping container.

Subware “Come On”

At last – an animated music video that doesn’t look like it was abandoned halfway through or done by someone learning the ropes. “Come On” has a Sims style of animation and we meet our hero in his 3D house, getting ready for a night out. This leads him to a nightclub, where he pulls out his fresh Michael Jackson moves, and is promptly ignored by the bustling dancefloor.

He’s looking for love and is caught accidentally checking out a fellow clubber’s cleavage. Dejected from her slap, he sulks off in a corner, only to have another attractive lady buy him a drink. He also has a perv at her cleavage and the video gets away with displaying her rack in a Benny Hill style – some a live-action video couldn’t manage.

They head off to park at a romantic spot in the countryside (what, he doesn’t want to take her to his pixelly bachelor pad?), only do discover they’ve parked by two dogs shagging. Suddenly there’s a flash of light and the lady disappears. This date isn’t going so well, but if he plays his cards right, he might still get lucky.

The dude goes searching and discovers his date standing by a nearby a UFO. After luring him into her sexy alien love chamber, she zips off her humanoid costume, revealing a green alien. And even worse – the bed transforms into examining table, complete with an anal probe. Ugh, worst date ever!

The style of animation is a good match for this instrumental track from the Auckland electronic duo. It’s fun and uses simple but good quality animation.

Best bit: the UFO graffiti in the club toilets – foreshadowing, yo.

Note: This video has since been removed from YouTube and it doesn’t seem to be available anywhere else.

Next… attack of the 50ft Pixies tribute band.

She’s Insane “E-Song”

This is a rather unusual video. We last saw She’s Insane in 1999. They have a late ’90s alterno pop sound, like a local Veruca Salt. Somehow by 2000 it’s all starting to sound a bit dated, a bit too thin and tweet compared to the fleshier rock sound that was making itself known.

The band’s previous videos focused on the band itself, but this one is an animated job. And it’s a good example of why it’s hard to make a good animated music video.

The main problem is the animation is extremely repetitive. The video is based on a group of four skeletons that represent the band. At the beginning of the video there’s an attempt to have one skeleton singing the song, but that soon falls away. After about the first 30 seconds, we start to see repeated bits of animation, and it feels like those scenes from the Flintstones where Dino runs past the same pot plant 20 times.

The background of the video is usually plain black, though one time a random brick warehouse is thrown in, just to make everything else look even more boring in comparison.

It ends up feeling not so much like a video but more like someone mucking around with some 3D animation software, using skeletons because they’re easier to animate than whole humans and they look cool. And it’s weird, but compared to this, the awful dancing baby animation of the ’90s has character.

This was the last She’s Insane video to have NZ On Air funding and it doesn’t feel like they were a band who grew from their experience. There was potential in there, but I feel like they should have been out gigging more and writing more songs before they were unleashed on the world at large.

Best bit: the doll, showing that weird music video skeletons have a heart.

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… a probing date.