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 she 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 tenth article in our series. You can catch up on the whole series here.
The tenth and final installment of Bec Plexus’ video release spree is Richard Ayres’ “close to you,” the third part of his trilogy of songs for Plexus. This song sees the creepy love story he began through to the finish line, with a surprising and humorous twist that illustrates the woes of teenage crushes. The music is airy and bright, but keeps the haunting attitude that colors Ayres’ other works for the record. Here, perhaps most notably, a more melodramatic side of Plexus’ avant-pop style is explored, providing a mystical conclusion to her album and accompanying video series. (You can read about the first two parts of Ayres’ trilogy here and here.)
In Plexus’ words:
“Ideally our idea was that we would finish with ‘close to you,’ which is the third song by Richard Ayres. We’re gonna complete the story about the teenage boy. We start with the monologue again, and we see the boy. He says, ‘ok, so back to the night I was standing in the darkness watching this beautiful boy sleep. I couldn’t help myself, I just wanted to give him a kiss. So, I bow over and I get closer and don’t get me wrong, this was never gonna happen, I was never gonna be together with this boy, this was my one chance! Give me a break! I just wanted to give one kiss, but then my foot slipped and my knee ended up in his crotch. They both woke up, and I’m so incredibly ashamed by it now, it was horrible.’ It’s this kind of lighthearted secret, or something you don’t dare say out loud, but it’s not like the heavy hearted secrets of ‘hold my tongue’ or ‘mirror image.’ It’s just a poor teenage boy that feels like he could never go outside again because of this.
And then starts the song ‘close to you,’ which is actually just really beautiful. The lyrics are mostly just variations of ‘close to you / closer to you / i want to be close to you.’ But, again, it has this little creepy twist. And so visually, I thought ‘what’s creepier than someone standing in front of your window on the pavement at night?’ And so you see the camera zooming in to you sitting behind your kitchen table.”