FOR FANS OF: The Cure, The Doors, Talking Heads
Beaver Sheppard’s latest music video release for “Downtown” looks like a dystopian memory filtered through an acid trip. Hailing from Montreal, this is Sheppard’s title track from his recent album Downtown and is said to be “a distorted memory, a deep-rooted trauma picking up distortion and resonance on its journey from the amygdala to the surface.”
Shot in what looks to be an abandoned, worn-down industrial area, the video enters with clips of Sheppard dancing on a stage with a hooded stranger playing a giant spoon as a guitar, fox-eared friends dancing with a masked stranger, and a killer saxophone riff.
"Sheppard’s Jim Morrison-esque croons are accompanied by saxophone and an unmistakable classic rock guitar."
The song itself plays over visuals of highly filtered faces and red lipstick smeared in a makeout session. Sheppard’s Jim Morrison-esque croons are accompanied by saxophone and an unmistakable classic rock guitar. The video tells a story of betrayal and heartbreak as the woman donning an ear adorned hat in the beginning suddenly at the end of the video is found by her lover or friend now to be a masked stranger. While some of the prismatic effects seemed like overkill and undoubtedly created some disturbing imagery, maybe that was the point. Seeing love change hands so easily can change the way you look at everything else around you.
There were no grandiose, extravagant elements to this video, it was pure art and thought. It’s one of those music videos that really make you wonder if you understand what the artist is truly trying to convey in their songs. I know I was questioning the meaning, and changed my mind multiple times throughout the course of viewing. But isn’t that what makes good art? Something capable of providing an experience for listeners, or viewers, to then interpret themselves. One that’s fluid and can change overtime instead of remaining forever stoic. This video is anything but stoic, however blunt the edges were in some of those prismatic effects there is a flow to it, and a movement not only in the filming but in the way it forced me to reconsider what I thought I was seeing. Even now I’m not entirely sure, but I know that I enjoyed it and it left me more curious than when I started.
*Quick scene changes create a flashing effect toward the end of the video so be cautious if watching with sensitivities to those kinds of light patterns.
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