Cate Blanchett has joined the likes of Kate Moss and Rosamund Pike in playing the starring role in a new video for Massive Attack.
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Or, more correctly, her head does.
The Spoils is a slow number with vocals by Mazzy Star singer Hope Sandoval laid atop a simple electro drum/clap beat and lush strings and synth. The lyrics (see below) are seemingly about clinging to and weaning off the decaying memories of a relationship that's come to an end.
The six-minute clip for The Spoils is directed by Blanchett's fellow Australian John Hillcoat, a frequent collaborator with Nick Cave who made Ghosts ... of the Civil Dead, The Proposition and Lawless from Cave's screenplays. He also directed the screen adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Road in 2009. It's fair to say Hillcoat is a dab hand with darker material.
His clip is a stripped-back affair in which a head occupies the centre of the frame.
But what starts as the clearly recognisable face of the dual Oscar-winning Blanchett soon morphs beyond recognition.
As the camera moves repeatedly back and forth and around the head, the lighting casts it into shadow and light, then different colours, until the image starts to flicker and decay. Then the head itself follows suit, the features losing definition as it changes, like a poorly made copy of a plastic doll that loses sharpness with each iteration. Hillcoat's camera even probes beneath the skin, going as far as an MRI image, until eventually all we're left with is a featureless stone relic, its origin as a sculpted head evident only in the shape.
Massive Attack, the pioneering trip-hop act from Bristol in the south-west of England, have been making music intermittently since 1988. Since the beginning of the year they have been especially prolific on the clip front, releasing four since January.
The clip for Ritual Spirit, from the EP of the same name, starred Kate Moss – like Blanchett, solo in the middle of the frame – illuminated by a swinging rope of lights. Gone Girl star Rosamund Pike starred in the clip for Voodoo in my Blood, a weird piece of violent sci-fi dance in an empty subway tunnel.
Most recently, they released Come Near Me, the video for which shows a woman walking from a house through the streets into the countryside and finally into the sea – all backwards – while being pursued by a man.
Well, no one ever accused Massive Attack of being cheery.
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The Spoils lyrics (as far as we can make them out, anyway)
I got that feeling, that bad feeling, that you don't love
I don't even know her but I hope that she comforts you tonight
Nobody here that keeps you in the shade will ever own you
Some sentimental tears of someone else's girl that drips away
I got that feeling, that bad feeling, that you don't love
I don't even know her but I hope that she comforts you tonight
And I somehow slowly love you, and want to keep you this way
Well I somehow slowly know you, and want to keep you away
Away
And I somehow slowly know you, and want to keep you this way
Well I somehow slowly know you, and want to keep you
But I somehow slowly love you, and want to keep you the same
Well I somehow slowly know you, and want to keep you away
