The Mint Chicks “Opium of the People”

2004-the-mint-chicks-opium-of-the-peopleThere’s something very reassuring about the Mint Chicks videos. They don’t feel like a relic of the mid ’00s. There’s still a certain freshness to them.

“Opium of the People” takes place in a studio with the backdrop decorated with an orange and white vulvic swirl. The band are sharply dressed in black and bring a twitchy but confident energy to their performance.

This is cut with a menagerie of weirdness – a topless woman (with a black bar protecting her modesty) wearing a paper mache lemon head, a person covered in green balloons, other citrus-headed person with long arms and a boombox around his neck.

In a lesser video, this would just be a mess of weirdness, but the direction of Wade Shotter (someone who knows how to have fun with the outré) and the central performance of frontman Ruban Nielson means the video is stylish and consolidated.

Best bit: the 1980s U-Matic video interference waves.

Director: Wade Shotter
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision

Next… more men in suits.

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