feist pulls the (heart)strings with latest video

October 22, 2008 by Alan Pedder in Blog

There’s something fishy going on

Feist is no stranger to working with puppets, as her brilliant musical number on ‘Sesame Street’ attests, but her new video for ‘Honey Honey’ involves far fewer warm and fuzzy beasties. Actually none, just a somewhat grim-looking mechanical anglerfish. Re-teaming with filmmaker Anthony Seck, who executive produced the ‘Mushaboom’ and ‘One Evening’ clips, Feist has come up with a work of perfectly realised darkness and beauty that’s worlds apart from the other Reminder videos.

There’s a profound sense of mythology at work here, probably Norse. In fact, it reminds me of the Emilíana Torrini song ‘Fisherman’s Woman’ in which a young (or in this case old) woman waits for her seafaring man at their lighthouse home on land, not knowing if or when he’ll be back. In the ‘Honey Honey’ video, he gets swallowed by the aforementioned fish and she, fearing the worst, sets out in full diving helmet attire armed with a spear to try and find him. Fittingly for the song there’s no real resolution to the tale. We’re left wondering whether he will ever be returned to her, or if she’ll search until she dies. You might even shed a wee tear.