Arcade Fire put out a kitschy new music video for 'Chemistry'
After a brief teaser on Twitter this past Friday, Arcade Fire have just dropped a brand new music video for their song 'Chemistry' from last year's highly divisive album 'Everything Now'.
It's a curious move from the band considering the fact that the song is definitely not one of their fan-favorites from the album. In fact, upon release, Spin magazine even went as far as to call it "The worst Arcade Fire song ever". But love it or hate it, the Grammy-winning indie legends have decided to thrust forth the music video upon us.
Almost as confusing as the song itself, the music video sits just as awkwardly among the other videos of the band. With the opening drumroll, we are introduced to a wedding party with much merriment, champagne and ballroom dancing. Only the party is not for humans — but anthropomorphic beings with the heads of a shark and the bodies of humans. Our protagonist is a bored waiter, who distinguishingly has the head of a dog instead of a shark. Soon, he locks eyes with the only woman in the party — the bride — who has the head of a cat! Our dog-headed protagonist approaches his lady love and mouths the lyric "baby destroy me", which somehow scores him a dance with her!
Predictably, a story of unrequited love follows, with the shark-headed men giving our dog-headed hero a sound thrashing before tossing him out of the party. But our man is not one to be easily discouraged. After setting the whole building on fire to smoke out the feline-headed bride, there ensues a hilarious 90's-style animated fight which our protagonist wins, leaving the shark-heads bloody and battered.
The two lovers are united and that's when things get weird and strangely psychedelic — including a scene where the lovers blast off into space and collide into a satellite — all in the same 90's style lo-fi kitschy animation.
The music video is in stark contrast to the previously shared 'Money + Love', which was a short film/double music video for the tracks 'Put Your Money On Me' and 'We Don't Deserve Love', the closing tracks of the album 'Everything Now'. The music video for 'Chemistry' was directed by Ray Tintori and animated by Starburns Industries, the production company behind projects such as 'Rick & Morty' and 'Anomalisa.'
“We’ve been big fans of Ray’s work since his early videos and there was talk of collaborating during 'The Suburbs' shoot–we were going to film it in New Orleans but then it got moved to Austin at the last minute, and Ray was caught up working on Beasts Of The Southern Wild,” frontman Win Butler explains in a statement. “So it was very full circle to finally be working with him in New Orleans during Mardi Gras. There is a playful, carnivalesque energy to the song; to capture that by filming literally during carnival felt right.”
Arcade Fire are currently on the 'Everything Now Continued Tour' in support of their latest album. Check out their full schedule here.