Canada’s MEMORYHOUSE formed as a kind of multimedia project, combining Evan Abeele’s compositions with Denise Nouvion’s photography and films. This probably explains why their latest video looks like a Calvin Klein ad with shots of a band spliced in.
‘The Kids Were Wrong’ finds Memoryhouse refining their electronic leanings into cutesy adolescent-romance guitar-pop. Sugary-sweet melody lie under lyrics like “Fingernails and cold skin/Your parents’ bed to lay in”, the song serves as a triumph to the urgency and awkwardness of young lust.
True to their multimedia roots, the clip works with this ‘first kiss’ aesthetic. Two impossibly beautiful teenagers run around on an idyllic winter rendezvous. It’s exactly like all my romantic high school dates, except this one is actually happening.
The video does start to lose me when these kids start playing jacks in a bedroom. It wasn’t so long ago that I was a teenager, and let me tell you, if I talked a girl into my bedroom, it wouldn’t have been to play an archaic parlour game so boring it practically caused World War One.
As for the band itself, well, for a photographer, Nouvion is natural in front of the camera. She nails that haunting babe vibe, and you can almost hear vinyl nerds gasp at her hair shake towards the end of the clip. This is the kind of video that makes me wish for winter so I’d have an excuse to offer my jacket to a pretty girl.
Words by Matt Nielson.
