In advance of the group’s upcoming performance at Pitchfork Fest, Irish dream-noise quartet Girl Band will release a 7-inch single of Holding Hands With Jamie highlight “In Plastic.” Today, they’ve shared a new video for the nauseating waltz, directed by longtime band collaborator Bob Gallagher, set at a security line in an airport of indeterminate time and place. Gallagher explains of the tense, striking, and darkly funny visual:
It’s [a] departure stylistically from the other videos. The others have had a very narrative drive, whereas “In Plastic” is more about creating an atmosphere, and putting the viewer through a weird overwhelming sensory experience, that hopefully compliments the different dynamics in the track. The narrative doesn’t make literal sense, and should feel confusing and claustrophobic. A bit like being on the inside of a panic attack.
I think I pitched the idea to the band as the fever dream Kafka might have if he ever read 1984. It’s not set in a particular place or period. Some of the references and inspirations are historical and some are quite recent. It’s a mish-mash of influences, and a lot of it was shaped by conversations with the band.
The video is obviously totally ridiculous in many ways, but it touches on themes of surveillance, paranoia, and how arbitrary the construct of a border can seem, which are all very contemporary anxieties. When I see clips of Donald Trump talking about deporting people and building walls I have to remind myself that I’m not watching an absurd alternate reality.
Watch the clip here.
