Back in June, British rock band Idles announced that their third album, entitled Ultra Mono, would arrive on September 25. The release date comes just over two years after their sophomore effort, Joy As An Act Of Resistance. The announcement was paired with the video for the song “Grounds,” with a promise to release a total of four songs and videos before the album’s arrival. After the video for “A Hymn,” which came in July, Idles has dropped one for “Model Village.”
Directed by Michel Gondry, the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind director who has also made videos for the likes of Daft Punk, Radiohead, and The White Stripes, the “Model Village” video is quite the surreal effort, pushing back against the idea of a city being “too small.”
“I hated growing up in a city that was really a town that was really a fishbowl,” Idles Joe Talbot in a press release statement. “I left as soon as I could, only to realize the fishbowl didn’t exist…just the fish, and they’re everywhere.” Talbot then went on to explain Gondry’s contribution to the group and how it lined up with a message he hoped the group could eventually live up to.
Michel’s work is handmade and it’s human and that’s something that our society pushes against: you need to be perfect. You need to look perfect and everything needs to be seamless and strong. But actually, vulnerability and naivety are strengths. To be vulnerable and to be naive is to have empathy. And so, to empathize with your adversaries and allow yourself to be naked on film or on record is a really strong thing to do. It liberates you and it also liberates your audience. That’s something that I hope that IDLES can do, and that Gondry’s been doing for years.
You can check out the “Model Village” video above.
Ultra Mono is out 9/25 via Partisan Records. Pre-order it here.
Source: https://uproxx.com/indie/idles-model-village-video-michel-gondry/