Home Is Where The Art Is

The music vid – if you can call it that – for Arcade Fire’s ‘We Used To Wait’ is knockout incredible. Dubbed ‘The Wilderness Downtown’ and directed by Chris Milk, if you haven’t watched – scratch that, participated – yet then do so here, now. Much will be made of the technology the video utilises – have a read of the BBC’s technology blog if that’s your thing – but the thing that floored me was the simplicity of the idea, and the heart-surging response it evokes.

Asking you to enter the address of where you grew up, the video begins with a lone figure sprinting along a deserted, no-name suburban street. As it continues, more browser windows pop up, first as a bird’s eye view circling the address you’ve entered, then travelling down the roads themselves. Then, as it comes to the climax, you’re asked to write a “letter of advice to the younger you,” a postcard to the past. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a video so brilliantly demonstrate the themes of the song it’s been filmed for – in five minutes, it’s more emotionally powerful than any music video since, perhaps, Johnny Cash’s ‘Hurt’.

Its impact will vary from watcher to watcher, and that’s the beauty of it. For example, if you’re still living in the house you grew up in, or visit it regularly, then it might not hit you any harder than “oh, that’s cool.” For me, though, I haven’t seen the house or the street where I spent my teenage years since it was sold after my dear mum passed away four years ago. In that sense, it took the video and the song to a whole new level that I’m not ashamed to say left a big fucking lump in my throat. Everything about it is perfectly pitched – the nostalgia of youth offset against the change of time, of remembering playing in those streets, living in that house, but seeing it for the first time in years, its front garden paved over, the car parked outside not my mum’s. I ummed and ahhed about writing that in a blog that, given my usual mouthy, gobby drivel, might feel a bit too starkly personal. But then I realised, that’s the whole point of ‘The Wilderness Downtown’ – it holds a mirror to the viewer, injecting what’s become one of the most soulless divisions of music media – truly, when was the last time a music vid did anything for you other than have you reaching for the remote? – with a Herculean slab of emotion, giving it not so much a personal touch, more of a personal thump.

To that end, Arcade Fire and Chris Milk need to be applauded and saluted for its achievement. Arcade Fire are exactly the sort of band who, like Pearl Jam and Nirvana in the 90s, you’d imagine turn their noses up at having to make music videos. But they don’t and they haven’t; they’ve done the opposite and laid down the gauntlet to anyone who dares make another let’s-shoot-it-in-black-and-white-get-the-band-playing-in-a-room video again. Right, I’m off to watch it again, except this time I’m gonna pretend I live in Leicester Square. Let’s see if that has the same sort of tear-jerking punch to it…