Wye Oak - “Holy Holy”
Is it just me or should a day at an amusement park look more fun than this? Over the course of their roller-coasting clip for “Holy Holy,” Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack remain strictly po-faced, even while swinging and swooping high off the ground, as if something were eating away at their minds and distracting them from all the lights and calliope. Could it be that they’re just children of the slowcore age and won’t deign to be seen looking un-pensive? Or could it be that this video is, in fact, not a story (“Hey look at us we rode some rides! Summer! America!”) but a twisted version of a performance? The needling blasts of feedback and bent strings that punctuate “Holy”s verses would seem to agree, crawling up the back of the listener’s neck like the vague sense of anxiety one feels as, strapped in with no way out, the little car climbs higher up the track. They tilt downwards as Stack lays into his cymbals, too, illustrating the vertiginous stomach flips that accompany those moments of weightlessness. There’s a simple rule of tension and release that governs all rides like this, and on “Holy Holy” the last minute or so, when Wasner stomps her distortion pedals and and lets her voice soar, is the cathartic drop, the moment when the fear evaporates and the rush of wind becomes exhilarating. “Our human joy is precious,” she sings. Her guitar shows it even if her face doesn’t.
runner-up: “Doubt”
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