Is it wrong that I find the new cute Faithless video so much better than latest from Bjork? Done to promote their new greatest hits collection, Faithless have redone "Why Go?" from a couple of albums ago where they've changed vocalists (no more Boy George apparently) and changed around the music (again apparently, can you tell I didn't buy that one?). The video is a fantastic example of taking a basic concept and taking it too the extreme. Essentially it follows a woman who can't stop dancing, and never does throughout the video as we follow her through her about ten years of her life (or about as long as Faithless have been releasing records) and in spite of the changes in her life she remains the herself which is an interesting commentary for a band looking back on their career. The best moment: the look on her face during her wedding.
While Bjork is the one artist I enjoy that translates in the world of video's consistently, but one the Spike Jonze directed video for "Triumph Of A Heart" she jumps the shark. While shooting a video roughly in the style of dogme 95 is usually an idea I endorse which talents like Bjork and Jonze, they ran into a brick wall with the whole Bjork has a complicated relationship with a cat storyline and then backed up to smash themselves to death with the whole dancing cat sequence. Don't get me wrong, part of genius of Jonze is that he's willing to go places he shouldn't, but this was just a bad, bad idea.
Of course, I'm still chuckling about Bjork's "Who Is It?" video from a few months back because I keep conjuring up a vision of record execs saying "now we let you do the whole album with just voices, and we respected your creative freedom, but wouldn't be great if you made an alternate version of the song for the single, maybe with some instruments." Bjork agrees, and three months later the exec ends up with a video of a bell chorus in a field and no instruments to be heard but bells.
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