Brooklyn-based ZEBEDEE have debuted their video for “Fright”, the first single off their self-titled debut EP. The video utilizes claymation designed by Kailey Killdone to tell its story, putting it firmly in the pantheon of classic stop-motion music videos alongside works by Tool, Peter Gabriel, and Green Jelly (née Jello). Unlike the triumphant moment of Green Jelly’s “Three Little Pigs” video wherein Rambo arrives to save the day by liberating a houseful of pigs while laying waste to a wolf, “Fright” follows a soldier as he spirals downward after returning home from war.
“When writing the song we strived to make it as loud and fuzzed out as possible,” expands ZEBEDEE. “I had a crumby little demo on my phone but I loved how washed out and compressed the recording was, so we tried to emulate that. I thought it was a good musical representation of the backwards beliefs and tragedies happening here in the State’s at the moment.”
While the animation for “Fright” at first seems whimsical, things get real, at times unsettlingly so, very quickly. The juxtaposition of the light animation style with the video’s dark subject matter and taut, muscular riffs gives the proceedings an unexpectedly poignant quality that one can’t take their eyes away from. Such a deliberate, if surprising, choice in animation allows the visuals to be both horrific and palatable to the viewer, portraying the violence of war and the ugly reality of society’s treatment of its veterans in a way that simply wouldn’t have worked in live action.
Zebedee plays Mercury Lounge this Saturday, July 30th. Tickets are available now.
The video’s artist is Kailey Killdone.
