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Uni's 2017 in music videos

YEAR END LIST 7/14. As a filmmaking-buff, I always appreciate artists giving their songs a video accompaniment. It's a way of either illustrating the message of the song or giving it an aesthetical sibling. And I grew to recognise different styles of videos and what they represent. And, as unfortunate as that may be, even though music videos start to fade, I still managed to find a handful that sticks out as a creative and a masterfully moving pieces of art. In this list, I sum them up and try to classify the presented brands of video-making (similarly to what I did in the Film Adaptations Classification Theory), but in no particular order. You might also find that some of these categories are interchangeable.
1Sorority Noise
You're Not As ____ As You Think

Collage

The simplest one, arguably. As the name suggests, it is a collection of vignettes, all possibly, but not necessarily, tied by one theme or detail. It doesn't have to be. It can also just be a bunch of unrelated scenes and shots that just looked nice enough to make the cut. But still, when you put in an effort to unite the sights by one universal idea, I appreciate it more.
2Sorority Noise
You're Not As ____ As You Think

Sorority Noise - No Halo (dir. Kyle Thrash)

The theme in this video is definitely depression and suicide. And yeah, I can't really relate to either of those topics, but I can appreciate an honest attempt at translating them to such an uninformed tyke as myself. But the topic is not what I admire on this video; it's the cinematography and the creative visual that explores the said topic. Every single shot is filled with ideas worth exploring. Every moment reflects someone's inner fears, demons and conflicts. It's not a myriad of people all shown to have the same obscure visual symbolic representation, everyone has their own creatively portrayed problem; be it inability to confess, failure to connect, wish to stop restricting yourself and so on. There's a horde of different ideas all thrown into one pile and it is astonishing to explore them all, from a filmmaking perspective...
3Sorority Noise
You're Not As ____ As You Think

[CON'D]
Especially given the fact that you can pretty much take any of those creative solutions and make a whole other video out of them, just following that one thing, that one idea, and the new videos might be just as effective.

Honourable Mentions: Iron and Wine - Call It Dreaming (dir. J. Austin Wilson)
4The Menzingers
After the Party

Montage

While collage explores a handful of similar themes or scenes of one universal topic, a montage focuses rather on one particular element of what could have otherwise been just another addition to the collage, and it explores that part in depth. It dissects a certain topic in depth, but not in a story. It just allows us to observe one topic from all sides. So in essence, it is the same a collage, except tied in directly.
5The Menzingers
After the Party

The Menzingers - After the Party (dir. Kyle Thrash)

Yeah, it's a second video by Kyle Thrash on this list. What can I say? The dude knows how to make heart-breaking, down-to-earth, life reflecting videos...and he also knows how to construct a good shot. I admired No Halo for its directorial and compositional component, but I couldn't quite connect with it, because the topic of depression and suicide was never anywhere close to me. So as opposed to No Halo's shot-construction beauty, After the Party's reality-reviewing take at relationships sat well with me, because it shows the bumpy roads of relationships towards strengthening and eventually acquired mutual appreciation. With every experience your relationship goes through, your bond tightens. With every obstacle you have to overcome, you learn to appreciate each other's presence more and more. And even though things might seem extraordinarily bleak in the end, your unity is strength...
6The Menzingers
After the Party

[CON'D]
It's an incredibly powerful look at a simple life of a young couple and all of its conflicts, tiny joys, fights and blisses. By the way, the girl looks like Emmy Rossum so much, I feel like I'm watching a trailer for a Shameless spin-off.

Honourable Mentions:
Radiohead - Lift (dir. Oscar Hudson)
Benjamin Clementine - Jupiter (dir. Lola Schnabel)
7Radiohead
OKNOTOK 1997-2017

Narrative

This one is quite self-explanatory, isn't it? It's a sort of short film with its own original soundtrack. The story told might not necessarily be an overly complex one and sometimes even illogical and serve only as a frame for some artsy creative visual nonsense, at which point it is debatable, whether it crosses into other categories.
8Radiohead
OKNOTOK 1997-2017

Radiohead - Man of War (dir. Colin Read)

Granted, Man of War's story is a little hard to describe. A guy feels fine, but then he's chased by some mysterious group of strangers. What is that supposed to be about? But the fact of it is that even though the story itself is quite simplistic and doesn't necessarily try to give you a lot of answers, it is still there. Call it style over substance, if you will. And it's not just that the video has a clear story it is telling, it's the way it is telling it that sticks out. We go from the paranoia of night to the ease of day moment by moment, until the two start to blend and the fright of the unknown carries over into the safety of daylight. The gradual process of one's suspense is displayed masterfully and the creative approach to paranoia and fear is portrayed with an utmost detailed precision.

Honourable Mentions:
Alex Cameron - Stranger's Kiss (feat. Angel Olsen) (dir. Jemima Kirke)
9Protomartyr
Relatives In Descent

Scene

The difference between a narrative video and a scene video is that while both tell a certain story, the narrative does it in a more traditional way, i.e. shows you unravelling events, but the scene video focuses rather on the atmosphere of one particular point in time with specific characters and pushes any story in might possibly explore on the background. In that, what we see is a rather contextualised event without any distinct acts or plot points. We see a certain composition and maybe it even leads to some kind of a conclusion, but there is no exact story we could follow. Even if there is, it's hidden in the background. It's a scene that takes place in front of us, not a full tale.
10Protomartyr
Relatives In Descent

Protomartyr - A Private Understanding (dir. Tony Wolski & Trevor Naud)

May my favourite song of the year's best music video of the year serve as an example. We don't really know what is happening, except the various details of the surroundings of the old man in the chair, who seems to be the main focus of the video. It's quite a strange little endeavour that doesn't exactly give you much clue on what is its meaning. That is, of course, until you start noticing those exact details. For once, absolutely everyone, except the old man, is smoking. Everybody's disinterest in them being there, while the old man is most likely laying his soul on the table. This video and song, while their messages still not quite clear to me, made me feel of a certain loneliness everyone experiences at some point of their lives. Lost in the crowd. Alone in the flock of people. The ultimate abandonment, one you cannot escape, even when you are among your peers...
11Protomartyr
Relatives In Descent

[CON'D]
The frightening disconnection, the terrifying solitude, the insufferable reality of fading connection with the rest of the world. But there is someone on the other side, within the world you indivertibly escaped or faded away from, and she calls upon you, she is trying to reach you. But you are too far gone. And she’s just trying to reach you.

Honourable Mentions: Young Thug and Carnage - Young Martha "Homie" (ft. Meek Mill) (dir. Oscar Hudson)
12General Elektriks
Parker Street

One big music video cliché, but no doubt one that is as old as art of music videos itself, is when the artist performs the very song and is the main focus of it. Now, it doesn't have to be just the band performing, plain and simple, it can also be resolved creatively. The band playing doesn't even have to be the primary focus, but it needs to be made clearly one of the video's main themes.
13General Elektriks
Parker Street

General Elektriks - Different Blue (dir. Arno Salters)
Always the French, innit? They just love this kind of music and this kind of eccentricity. General Elektriks came back this year with a song and an accompanying video, both hilariously extravagant. The song is an electropop silliness, while the video shows the band performing in a storage unit, but cloned to infinite numbers by the magic of visual effects.

Honourable Mentions: Foo Fighters - Run (dir. Dave Grohl)
14Protomartyr
Relatives In Descent

Aesthetical work

This one could be called the simplest method too, because it is essentially just a visual interpretation of the music's vibe, atmosphere and mood. Just as the title suggests, this is a purely aesthetically matching video, showing usually meaningless, but nevertheless intriguing visual spectacular.
15Protomartyr
Relatives In Descent

Protomartyr - Don't Go to Anacita (dir. Yoonha Park)

A one-shot ride up the societal stairs. Literally. Protomartyr's socio-political passive-aggressive rampage deserved a properly dismal visual representation. And it got exactly that. This video features a slow, uncut move up the abstract stairs leading virtually nowhere. Step by step you're greeted to all sorts of visuals and scenes in lives of all sorts of people, starting at the bottom of the societal food chain up to the middle class and ending with what seems to be a political revolution but still showing that despair and poverty awaits at every step and everyone up there, with the video ending in pretty much exactly the same spot as it began.

Honourable Mentions: St. Vincent - New York (dir. Alex Da Corte)
16Kamasi Washington
Harmony of Difference

Compositional work

Much like the difference between a collage and a montage or the difference between a narrative and a scene, the differences between an aesthetical and a compositional music video may blur a little. While an aesthetical video accompaniment doesn't hold any larger significance than being a visualisation of the music's atmosphere, mood and style, the compositional video usually delves much deeper than that. It doesn't only show you something that goes perfectly in sync with the music and that enriches the musical ayahuasca, but also manages to transcend beyond the limits of simple accompaniment and contributes with lore of its own, possibly even working as a vital part of its musical source.
17Kamasi Washington
Harmony of Difference

Kamasi Washington - Truth (dir. AG Rojas)

Kamasi Washington's Truth is already a bearer of a much deserved status of the easiest 14 minutes of music to go through. It's a colourful, vibrant and warm track that fills me with instant joy any time I hear it. But besides being an incredible piece of music, it also carries a beautiful, almost documentary-like video. It shows either a handful of different, or variations of the same culture in America (I'm not very educated in that way, I can't tell whether it's one big ritual or a couple of unrelated happenings). Its cinematographic beauty is simply transcendental and the miniature insights into lives of various cultures (or, again, one culture, as I said, I have no way of knowing) also creates a certain feeling of, as mentioned before, documentary.

Honourable Mentions: Arcade Fire - Everything Now (dir. The Sacred Egg) - this could also qualify for the 'performance' section
18Naive New Beaters
A la folie

Reverse (Style Over Substance, if you will)

This is when the music video transcends its original purpose of being a visual sputnik to a song and becomes its own thing, possibly making the very music it is based around its very own soundtrack.
19Naive New Beaters
A la folie

Naive New Beaters - Words Hurt (dir. Romain Chassaing)

This might be one of the most creative music videos I've seen in my life (together with Pup's Old Wounds, but we'll get to that later). It lets you, the viewer, decide, where it'll head. Yeah, in order to see the full story, whatever that story might be, you need to visit a website of the music video. There, you get to see all the possible lives the protagonist could lead, all depending on which choices you make. You start off with a final exam in school and can end up either with nothing, president of the world or just say fuck it and sell humans to aliens for money that is now worthless, thanks to your actions. It's a fun game, in which the song that it is supposed to accompany is pushed on the background and serves purely as a catchy and fun soundtrack to this already upbeat craziness...
20Naive New Beaters
A la folie

[CON'D]
In fact, once you make certain decisions, the system pauses for a second, interrupting the track, and moves on with another section of the song and the story, therefore making the role of the song itself quite secondary.

Honourable Mentions: Pup - Old Wounds (dir. Jeremy Schaulin-Rioux)
A little more confusing than Words Hurt, but ultimately just as fun. Besides, this looks more like an old arcade game, which is a visual style they embraced before on a music video for DVP off of the same album. This 'game' lets you choose, which band member you want to play as and then it's up to you as to what events unravel. How 'bout that? Fun, innit?
21OK Go
Hungry Ghosts

Artistic installation

This one takes a particular kind of gut and a particular kind of creativity. A full on machine of creativity that serves as a setting and arrangement for a video.
22OK Go
Hungry Ghosts

OK Go - Obsession (dir. Damian Kulash, Jr. & Yusuke Tanaka)

Another year, another fantastic OK Go video... and an utterly forgettable song. This time around the band has focused on messing with a shittonnes of paper and make compositionally and aesthetically beautiful imagery out of it. The appearing paper changes colours, forms shapes, stops mid-way, gets stuck on its way out of the printer. And all of that formed in a series of sped up, quickly cut moments... and a shameless ad at the end.

Honourable Mentions: unfortunately, I didn't find anything feature-worthy for this, but if anyone of you have any ideas, please let me know
23Moon Duo
Occult Architecture Vol. 1

Animation

A simple one. Animated videos can really be anything. They can be a scene, a narrative even, just a quick montage of this and that or a near-motionless little formality, so that the song doesn't go out into the world without a visual accompaniment. It can be anything, as long as it is animated.
24Moon Duo
Occult Architecture Vol. 1

Moon Duo - Cold Fear/Lost in Light (dir. Micah Buzan)

Dystopian, futuristic phantasmagoria. Need I say more? Moon Duo's double album Occult Architecture may not have been a perfect experience, but this video shows that it might have felt a slight tad more purposeful and meaningful had its entirety had a visual imagery like this. The narrative of the video is virtually non-existent, but it is damn intriguing to watch and see just what crazy, epilepsy-inducing obscurity it can throw your way.

Honourable Mentions: Coldplay - Aliens (dir. Ben Jones)
Chad VanGaalen - Pine and Clover (dir. Chad VanGaalen)
25NovelT
The Odyssey

DIY

I've got to give at least one spot on the list unto the try-hard independent (well, arguably independent) bands. The DIY videos don't strike with professionalism or an outstanding visual component and could normally just fit in with any of the other categories. But for their sometimes amusing and often cringe worthy nature, they, in all of their trashiness, should be their own category; a sort of Grindhouse of music videos, if you will.
26NovelT
The Odyssey

NovelT - Listen to Me (dir. our very own Connor "Conmaniac" Sbrocco!)

So yeah, putting this on the list is a little bit of a cheating, because Conmaniac of Sputnikmusic fame is to thank for masterminding this neo-romanticist surreal and obvious homage to the works of Eduard Mörike and Christian Morgenstern in a visual form, with a certain realism-strike that only a Stefan Zweig or Allen Ginsberg could dream up. This place has everything, chubby white boy looking emotionally hurt, near-Baptist hobby of water-standing, sticks'n'trees worship and the acting abilities, obstacled by the inability to delete slight hints of smile from your face, possibly caused by the realisation of the absurdity of it all. It's a modern cinematographic masterpiece. It's only real shame I had to pass over Toro Y Moi's homage to old homemade music videos for this.

Honourable Mentions:
Toro Y Moi - Girl Like You (dir. Mancy Gant, but it's not really clear)
King Krule - Dum Surfer (dir. Brother Willis)
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