At The Drive-In return from a 17-year silence with a hauntingly vindictive take on predatory sexual abuse, Laura Marling kills it softly pink with a lovely tale about sweet, fleeting love, Animal Collective master the simple art of literati psychedelia, and more in the 10th week of the best lyric videos hitting your eyeballs this year.
Animal Collective – ‘Kinda Bonkers‘
Dropped in tandem with the Maryland experimental pop crew’s EP, The Painters, back at the tail end of February, not only have they been a prime candidate for the lyric vid medium, their already non-sequitor narratives hard to discern on their own let alone paired with their cacophonous, absorbing sound, but they managed to nail it out of the gate, marrying said psychedelic mantra with a kaleidoscopic, disappearing ink meets graffiti swirl of an experience, especially for a song about how beautifully weird this world is:
Laura Marling – ‘Nothing, Not Nearly‘
While there’s usually lots to unpack in a Laura Marling joint, the Brit songbird at a spritely 27-years-young having dropped six albums now with narratives that rival some of Joni Mitchell and Bobby Dylan‘s finest, with this taste from Semper Femina, we’re witnessing Marling hone in already on the concept of a craft taking a lifetime of energy to master the simple, the lyric vid equally streamlined, cast in a pastel pink and sinewy cascading text illustrating a story about love and its fleeting attributes that you’ll probably forget to savor because that’s what humans are best at:
Coldplay – ‘Hypnotised’
It’s been a while since Coldplay showed some teeth, opting for whatever propels their milquetoast arena rock further and quicker into the rafters. “Hypnotised” doesn’t require much chewing the same, coming to an interlude, low-energy mid-setlist option near you, but the A/V treatment sure is pretty to look at, navigating mountain, river, ocean and stream in soft rainbow hues, including the fade-about narrative, set in handwritten font and sneaking in some moderately clever, subtle takes on different perspectives:
San Fermin – ‘Belong‘
Cast in the same luminescent floral pattern of wallpaper as previous singles for the Brooklyn soft-pop crew’s LP3, Belong (due April 7), here the title track vibes hard with an if-these-walls-could-talk mood, cut for the generation Instagram with giant block letters and an otherwise absence of subtlety that despite all odds is actually pretty perfect when the sax rolls in and that line about “two sinking bodies and their bones:”
At The Drive-In – ‘Incurably Innocent‘
As we all know as much as ‘this is our last song’ announcements at concerts prior to umpteenth amounts of encores, bands never truly call it quits. So goes the story with a 17-year absence from the Texas screamo hearts, back with a vengeance on a track about, “sexual abuse and being able to finally speak out,” so says lead singer, Cedric Bixler-Zavala. Pairing the sentiment is a palpitating animation rife with predatory animal imagery and live-action crossed-out lyrics that only serve to embolden the harrowing theme: