Once again iterating that there’s nothing an iPhone can’t do in the artistic realm (see: Tangerine), Metric’s latest video, directed by Justin Broadbent, proves that with the iPhone X’s bandwidth, anything is possible. Including use of a four-pronged splitscreen exploring the notion that it’s easy to feel alone when you can’t seem to find anyone to relate to or understand you as your OG friends can. As frontwoman Emily Haines put it, “For anyone who has had that alienated ‘get me the hell out of here’ feeling, we’re right there with you.” And who wouldn’t feel that way in these strange and dichotomous times in which, theoretically we are as free as we have ever been, yet also still constantly judged by the supporters of an unjust and inhumane regime (that applies to essentially every country at the moment)?
This is precisely why it’s important to cultivate a tight-knit crew of people that, if they don’t understand you, at least accept you just as you are. And with the image of a postcard for one moment in a single frame and the next divided into four as we watch each band member do their own thing while they wander aimlessly in towns alone, together, it is worth noting that being alone can still often be preferable to spending time with the twats available to you at the moment. Those twats sometimes being people of privilege that were simply bequeathed with the ability to do what they want in life (whether that means loafing under the guise of some such bullshit as starting a jewelry line or not).
The description of such a type is best elucidated when Haines sings, “She’s a tourist of the world beneath/I said, ‘Everything I built from nothing’/She said, ‘I’m so rich, everything’s free.'” An elaboration to that exchange comes later on in the song with, “I said, ‘Everything I built from nothing’/She said ‘Don’t you blame your problems on me.'” Such can be the cold-hearted ways of those nonplussed by the idea that trickle-down economics is a sham.
And as fellow band members, Joshua Winstead, Joules Scott-Key and James Shaw roam their respective environments, we get the sense that each one, while hopelessly ridden with ennui in their loneliness, is aware that, someday, they’ll be reunited with the people who truly appreciate and “see” them. As Haines explains of the concept behind the song and video,
The song ‘Dark Saturday’ describes a night spent trapped in useless conversation with rich idiots where all you want to do is be with your real friends. When we started talking to video director Justin Broadbent about how to translate that sentiment, we found we had zero interest in making a conventional music video and quickly decided it would be way more entertaining to check into a nasty motel for a night and see what happened. Broadbent mapped out some locations and moments and we knocked them out till the break of dawn. I love how he captured that feeling of separate loneliness for each of us in the form of four phone screens, and the ‘wish you were here’ postcard punchline at the end.
Even if that wish doesn’t quite come true at the end, it just has to one day. “Someday we’ll be together,” like The Supremes said. In the meantime, send your loved one a postcard to remind them that they have to pull through for just a little bit longer until they can see you, a reasonable, non-cunt of a human being, again. In other words, if you have no other decent friend besides music, Metric’s as of yet untitled seventh album is coming out in September.
