Who: Foster the People
What: Helena Beat
Produced by: Ace Norton for Partizan
Label: Star Time/ Columbia Records
Modern childhood is rubbish. At least according to those adults fortunate enough to grow up in a time when it was considered acceptable to play in the street without the need for electronic chips and twenty-four hour surveillance. You can’t even read the Daily Mail any more without finding out how young people are simultaneously sat in bedrooms glued to their television screens, and rampaging through the local suburb giving a drug-induced middle finger to the establishment.
Ace Norton, music video-director extraordinaire, clearly decided that these kids were getting a short shrift. In his video for Foster the People’s second single, “Helena Beat”, he goes out of his way to show just how intelligent and adaptable they really are. Just look at their innovative use of sporting equipment! And how they use body art to express themselves! They must be pretty darned clever if they managed to come up with that age-defying mask-machine all by themselves, that’s for sure. It positively restores your faith in the education system, that society has produced children so capable of looking after themselves at such a young age!
Well, that may not quite have been the point, but I always like to be optimistic.
The song itself is in the same vein as MGMT or Empire of the Sun, the vocals virtually identical in style and pitch, and the electronics suitably scuzzy without losing the sun-dappled sound that makes bands like this so popular. The video is fairly entertaining, even if the post-apocalyptic setting has been somewhat overused over the past few months. Following their debut set at Glastonbury this summer, these guys are set to make a big impression over the next few months. Hopefully not the same kind of impressions the jolly little children make in their music video. With hockey sticks. On people’s skulls.
Watch it here:
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