The Shins’ Halloween-Theme New Video For ‘Dead Alive’
The Shins
Just in time for Halloween, we get a spooky video from the Shins, and it’s called Dead Alive’. Yes, it has such a seasonal theme that the band tweeted on Wednesday morning: ‘a Halloween gift while you wait for the album’… and I can assure you the Shins don’t tweet very often.
After the spooky intro, past the strange, surrealistic and chaotic visuals, the music is pure Shins, a catchy chorus, James Mercer’s dream-like vocals, gently floating above the playful flow, while the whole thing is oozing melancholia through cryptic lyrics vaguely mentioning ‘girls in braids’, ‘roller skates’, ‘pity nights and ray gentle lights’… but especially ‘figments of imagination’ in repeat. The sound is a back to basic and the essence of what made this band’s music so instantaneously recognizable.
The video is imaginative but one thing is sure they didn’t spend too much in the making of the clip! The simple ‘special effects’ probably didn’t cost very much to make Mercer look like a giant in a miniature city, or in reverse, like a tiny creature in a gigantesque surrounding. Again we are back to basics in this complicated inverted world…and may be this is what is missing. The music is lovely but where is the surprise? It is another Shins song to add to the collection.
The band teased the video on their website earlier this week with a voiceover saying: ‘In a dead-end town, a car salesman is in great danger. It’s something he can’t run from, something in his subconscious.’ The song will be featured on their upcoming album due out sometime next year, the follow-up to their 2012’s P’ort Of Morrow.’
