On May 9, Bec Plexus threw a 24-hour party, via livestream, to honor the release of her newest album, STICKLIP, in which she created 10 psychedelic music videos to accompany the songs on the record. The videos mimic the live performances they had prepared prior to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The Road to Sound is premiering each of these videos over the next ten weeks. This is the seventh article in our series. You can catch up on the whole series here.
The seventh installation of Bec Plexus’ video release spree is Richard Ayres’ “give me your heart,” the second in his three-part series of songs for Plexus’ STICKLIP. “Give me your heart” continues the creepy story of unrequited love he’d begun to tell in “i picked you up,” the first song in his series. (You can refresh yourself on the first part of Ayres’ story here.) This time, though, he depicts the lover’s growing obsession with his love’s heart, with particular attention to his need to obtain this heart for himself. Plexus highlights the disturbing aspects of the story in her singing, which comes in eerily breathy waves. The music itself is groovy, but anxious in its out-of-sync beats and echoey sounds, signaling the horror that lies beyond the seemingly cheerful surface.
In Plexus’ words:
“The second song by Richard Ayres, ‘give me your heart,’ goes back into the monologue of the teenage boy, and this time he’s saying: ‘Remember that beautiful boy that I was in love with, the best friend of my brother? One night he came to stay over and I just couldn’t sleep, at 3 in the night I was still awake and I decided to go to my brother’s bedroom where he was sleeping, and I opened the door and I just watched him sleep. He was so, so beautiful.’ That’s where it ends. So, it’s this nocturnal moment. The song’s lyrics describe the boy’s desire to get his lover’s heart:
give me your heart
i’ll keep it with mine
i want your heart
not just your heart
give me your heart,
and everything else,
and everything else,
except your mind
i have your mind
Very creepy! [laughs]
In the video, we see the same characters as in the first video, which was for ‘i picked you up.’ This time, they’re standing next to each other, so it’s a much simpler setup. The loved one is looking in the camera and not really doing anything, and apparently not really realizing what’s going on while the lover is pressing more and more that he wants to get the heart of the loved one. He reaches out to the other person to give the heart to him, and then he kneels down, which is symbolic of proposing to someone. Then, there’s this completely bizarre moment, but I just found it really funny. It’s this close up shot of an animated heart — we see this glittery, pink blob that comes into the camera. Then, we go back to that portrait shot, but this time the lover’s holding a hammer and a drill, and actually lays his hand on the body of the loved one. The video was about trying to create the scariness that all these songs have.
There was also this unexpected dance component that was not planned, this was at the very end of the filming. We had already done one and a half days of filming, and it was now 1am or something. I was still recording my voice, and at the same time filming it because it all had to happen at the same time so that the audio and the video would sync. That’s when I suddenly decided that I would dance. It’s a really groovy song, so why not?”
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