Deerhunter - “Living My Life” (Official Video)

I had very kind things to say about Deerhunter’s new Fading Frontier yesterday, and one big reason I adore the album is “Living My Life,” a song that sets Bradford Cox’s ruminations about wasted youth against gorgeously shimmering ’80s pop that splits the difference between new wave and new age. “Will you tell me when you find out how to conquer all this fear?” Cox sings. “I’ve been spending all my time out on the fading frontier.” As with the “Breaker” visuals, Cox shot and edited the “Living My Life” video with an assist from Lockett Pundt. It’s a collage-like piece that features Pundt, Cox’s dog Faulkner, scenes from around Atlanta, and a lot of microscopic footage. In a press release, Cox explains the ideas behind the video, which is dedicated to Miles Davis:

…macro meditations on geology and botany to observations of afternoon light filtered onto wooden floors. The idea was to have a formless visual that does not conform to the overwhelming cleverness and narrative ambition of most modern videos. Instead we have a sometimes pointless, sometimes ridiculous, and sometimes hypnotically beautiful mess of images and rhythm. The final section of the video, in particular, could be a teenage garage band take on Tarkovsky’s Solaris. Various chemicals and dyes were used to create a liquid fantasia for the song’s transcendent climax.