The video opens on a close-up of a blurred hand playing air guitar, digits going through the motion of fingering as the guitar plays on the soundtrack. Out of focus, the hand looks old and weathered. As the camera pulls back and takes in the full figure, what immediately leaps out are the large bamboo earrings, slicked down hair, parted in the middle and pulled back, and a shawl whose swirl of vibrant colors pops off the screen. The effect is a light homage to Frida Kahlo, tweaked with the accents that reference the old school ‘round-the-way Black girl aesthetics that have recently made their way to skinny, high-fashion, white femme bodies.
Feist’s new single is an atmospheric trek through feminine interiority, where amped guitar riffs give way to sudden drops in silence, or those silences bloom into the riffs, all while her singular voice wraps itself around lyrics about the mysteries of desire and pleasure, and the ways coupledom both compounds and unravels the mystery. If this is a clue as to what to expect from her forthcoming album (also title Pleasure; dropping April 28th,) then we can all thrill to yet another evolutionary phase/iteration/unforced-but-potent reinvention of one pop’s low-key super heroines.
Top image courtesy Mike Pont/Getty Images.
