Boulder, Colorado’s Aminals switches around the consonants and switches up the acoustic and electronic modes of production as featured in the video debut of “Sides”, directed by Elleree Fletcher. Fronted by Jake Sheppard, the different aspects of personalities, lives (past, present, and former), and narratives from a rouge’s gallery. From his debut, Lightning, No? EP; sparse un-amplified strings reach outward like open arms to the echo audio fields to embrace the slightly touched synthesized fields of orchestration and drum machines.
The floral print shower curtain begins and ends the video for “Sides”, where Elleree’s direction takes Aminals song deeper between, and beyond the pale veil. Jake’s woeful chorus canyon call, “alone in the desert where you have no one, alone in the desert with nothing at all,” finds new company, and relives the stories of others while recreating and imitating the poses taken from the display of framed photographs—all while sporting a Basquiat shirt. Beginning with Sheppard brushing his teeth, the moments caught from the pictures are recreated; from outdoor lawn chair newspaper sessions, thoughtful profile portraits, waving ‘hi’ to the camera with a good friend, enjoying a pint on the patio, to an enthusiastic (to ecstatic) indulgence of consuming ribs. The different “Sides” of other people’s lives inspire mirror mimicry, to free-styled scenes of chasing around rabbits, creating new triptychs, lighting experiments, freight train photo ops, and making new memories. Exploring and imitating the array of moments from the past provides the second half of the video’s dedication to making new memories that continue a tradition of connected, but different sides of others and the self. Jake further described the song for us with the following words:
“Sides” is literally sides. Sides of people, sides of places, and sides of stories we make up about them. It started from the inherent desire to project myself onto others, and the idea that other people are projecting themselves onto me. There can be a heightened sense of loneliness to being in a crowd, and it’s oddly comforting to think of myself as a character in someone else’s narrative.
Listen to more Aminals via Soundcloud.
