“When I was done, it would either be because I had won the Olympics
19 times and broken all possible world records. I would have reached the
pinnacle of sports fame, driving a different exotic car every day of
the week and buying small countries with my 900 bazillion dollars. Or,
I’d walk into the rink one day and there would be a giant neon sign
reading: ‘Braden Overett’s Retiring Today!’ … Guess what. None of that
happened.”
— Braden Overett (pictured above)
No one should expect figure skating and frantic noise rock to blend
well, but just look at that quote up above. It’s from Braden Overett’s
open letter announcing his retirement from ice skating, and it channels
the darkly funny and cynical spirit of Pissed Jeans perfectly. In a
wonderful new Joe Stakun-directed music video for the Honeys
highlight “Romanticize Me,” Overett plays an ice rink janitor who dreams
of figure skating. Bookended by dull, music-less sequences of him
cleaning, eating, Zamboni … ing?, he channels the band’s obsessions with
failure and mundanity (See: “Spent”).
In between those moments though is a jaw-dropping performance by
Overett in a ridiculous sparkly outfit. The music and his performance
are aggressive, just a little silly, and when you understand the
context, sort of sad, too. But I just keep thinking back to that quote
and how the band, the main character, and Overett himself clearly see
the lack of control when failure hits, promptly say, “Fuck it,” and
skate on. Check the video out below, and tell me: I can’t be the only
one that wants to see something like this happen at the Olympics,
right?.
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