A tasteful amalgamation of multiple artistic themes would seem a lot for any music video to take on, but Celestial Shore’s newest for their track, “Weekenders” (off their second album, Enter Ghost) is a meticulous blend of curious, morbid and beautiful. Calling on lighting and visual influences form the likes of David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick, the video depicts a dying woman, and the false, perhaps hallucinatory, white-lie promises from her lover that everything is going to be alright. With the dreamy backdrop of Celestial Shore’s hushed pop and the whispered lyrics, “We can still be young again, and run around again,” juxtaposed against the grim, but sweet sentiments of the images, it’s kind of like Eraserhead meets Amour.
The video is clearly deeply personal, flickering between the past, present, and the fantastical, creating the almost uncomfortable prettiness of false hope, and only added onto by the nature of the song. How sad to hear, “I wanna run around with you on a Saturday,” knowing the possibility of that is nil. It’s a notable change, both sonically and visually, from the animated (perhaps more redolent of Lynch’s short, The Alphabet) video for their trippy banger, “Creation Myth.”
Celestial Shore’s Enter Ghost is available now on Home Tapes.
