“Girls of Israel” is the latest video from Toronto’s Blonde Elvis and it is a trippy kaleidoscopic cosmic tour set to the band’s unique brand of retro futuristic synth pop. According to the video’s director Paul Hanlon, the video “imagines an omnipotent figure who unfortunately can’t get a word out…people love him. They take what they need from him despite a total miscommunication.” This is portrayed on screen via a shot of Jesse James Laderoute, lead vocalist of Blonde Elvis, as he begins to speak, but is constantly halted by sharp editing just as his lips are about to move to the lyrics.
Behind Laderoute is everything from a field of stars and planets to a bubbling, warping vision of an audience thunderously applauding. Silent film title cards narrate the events of the video and they lend a reality and authenticity to it, as if all the components of the video had existed for years, but was only recently assembled into what we now see before us. As the Bowie-esque tune dramatically moves along, Laderoute’s understated performance is punctuated by the grand, if still lo-fi, visuals, that flow in and out of time and space.
