Courtney Barnett has a new video out for her Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit track “Kim’s Caravan,” and it’s fairly ambitious, as far as her previous clips go. Clocking in at over six minutes and inspired by her worry over Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the Bec Kingma-directed clip depicts, in Barnett’s words, “an apocalyptic tale of our world painted black with oil and soot, painted red with blood and greed.”
She continues in a press release:
The song was born when blessed with time to reflect, feeling the frustration and helplessness of the destruction of my environment and the litter of humans within it. It was partly inspired by watching Black Rain Falls, a documentary about Midnight Oil’s concerts out the front of the Exxon building in NYC in 1990.
Kingma also chimes in with her interpretation of the video, which is careful to linger over a bunch of now-desolate tourist sights and beaches.
In conceptualizing a film clip for the track I am keen to explore the adult attempt to return to that place of childish innocence. If you have ever returned to a childhood holiday haunt in the offseason, it’s likely you’ve discovered the sad realisation that the place barely resembles your idyllic memories. As grown ups we all yearn for a time and place where our biggest concerns were the sand in our bathers and the mosquito’s eating us alive.
Watch “Kim’s Caravan” above.
