Music videos can be an art by themselves, they sometimes transcend music and tells stories (or not), they bring imagery, sometimes pointless, other times weird and cryptic, but I am always trying to make sense of them, just trying… and it may be hard find an explanation to this new one….
Angel Olsen is an unique artist, she sings her powerful songs with this unbelievable angelic voice, and she has just released a new video directed by Rick Alverson, for her song ‘Windows’, to honor the deluxe edition of her album ‘Burn Your Fire for no Witness’,
The video is an enigmatic beauty, beautifully shot, and it shows Angel and her famous blank stare, as she goes from total expressionlessness to a real sadness frozen on her face, while her emotive song is played. For most of the song, she seems to think about the past, moving like a ghost, wandering through fields and haunting an old house while observing two little kids playing and running around. Then, suddenly, the kids smear Vaseline on her face… transforming her into some Elizabethan character, the time of a dream….
‘Won’t you open a window sometime/what’s so wrong with the light’, she sings till the end of the song, and I guess she will intrigue a lot of people with this Vaseline facial mask! But for me, the song subtly evokes isolation, depression and not been done with some terrible past, although nothing is really revealed about it. And Angel couldn’t have found a better metaphor than the Vaseline… it takes on a symbolic dimension, becomes a sort of materialization of her isolation, which transforms her into a wax figure, congealed in a distant past… and the little girl may be her as a child. But may be I am reading too much? I can’t help it, but I always get the impression I have spoiled something when I have explained some art too much… Oh well, just watch the video, find your own meaning or just enjoy the mysterious beauty of the song.
