In what has become a growing string of ocularly stimulating and thematically fascinating visual companions for Youth Lagoon’s recent Savage Hills Ballroom LP, Trevor Powers has now followed up "Highway Patrol Stun Gun" with a new, Lucas Navarro-directed video for “The Knower."
The video follows a mystifying old woman wandering about what looks to be an animated nursing home filled with vibrant adornment that serve as purposeful symbolism or deliberate misdirect.
The video scans various parts of nursing home life– a bingo hall, a solarium walkway, someone’s hand sliding off of a cane – that eventually leads to the illumination of the building’s name as the “Savage Hills Retirement Home.” Could this video provide context to the origin Trevor Powers’ choice of album title?
More setting passes and then we’re met with the tired eyes of an elderly woman, meandering across a swimming pool deck, in total and complete solitude. Another shot of the cockatoo and then a match igniting into flame, and all of a sudden, the Savage Hills Retirement Home ballroom is set ablaze as the elderly woman turned arsonist watches in quiet tranquility.
The silent, lifeless shots seen at the beginning of the video are now disrupted with fits of flame and frenzy, when all the while, our favorite elderly arsonist ambles out of the ballroom with only the slightest sense of urgency. Amidst the tumult of the inferno, the cockatoo breaks out of its cage, perhaps symbolizing Powers’ coming to grips with the death of a friend, or maybe even utilizing the allegorical connection of a cockatoo being a sign of spiritual providence. Who knows?
Our favorite elderly arsonist is last seen dancing amongst the flames of the Savage Hills Retirement Home ballroom, with the cockatoo flying past in escape. “The Knower” certainly offers up some powerful imagery in its visual counterpart, but Powers’ true intention behind the video is shrouded I the same stimulating imagery, which makes the experience all the more lush.
Savage HIlls Ballroom is out now via Fat Possum Records