Halifax’s Ursa Bright (formerly Orchards) are lost deep in fantasy with their new video for “Flesh.” Taken from their debut album, A Shining Sea of Dopamine, the track indulges in earthly desires on a cerebral plane, dropping lines like “we’re off to bed, but not to sleep”, to name one of the less explicit ones. Rather than gratuitous debauchery, the band explain that “Flesh” is actually a warning, running contrary to its sensuous lyrics.
“The video was written and directed by Jagger Lillington. We shot it on a lakeside in Tantallon, Nova Scotia on his friend’s property. We split the shoot over two days, one for the narrative portion of the video and another for the band’s performance. For 3/4 of us in Ursa Bright, this was our first time making or being in a music video, so it was a pretty foreign and exciting experience.” says Ursa Bright’s guitarist and vocalist Isaac Marr.
Marr describes the video’s narrative as being “pretty simple,” following along a happy (played by Sebastian Regimbald and Katie Graham) on a pretty rural drive.
“They’re having a good time, enjoying each other’s company. Basically having one of those ‘little moments’ that only feels significant years after it actually happens,” says Marr.
And then the M. Night Shyamalan twist: as the lyrics to “Flesh” point out, the woman on this doesn’t existed and the man on this drive is indulging in a fabricated fantasy.
“As it progresses, it’s revealed that the man was driving by himself the whole time. His partner was a projection or recollection of an old relationship.”
With the video closing with our sole existing character gazing out over the lake – alone, pained, and exhausted – we’re left to wonder if something more nefarious has occurred. Did his partner exist? Are her remains hiding beneath the surface? Is he consumed day and night by the memory of her flesh? Is it Halloween yet?
“The song Flesh (from which our album title “A Shining Sea of Dopamine” is derived) is about clinging to and replaying a specific memory over and over again, and the inability to let it go,” explains Marr. “It’s about being so tangled up in a pleasant memory that you can’t let yourself make new ones. And the eventual realization of how warped your perception of that memory can become.
“The video does a good job of mirroring that idea, using flares of colour throughout to suggest a dream-like or imaginary state. It creates a warm tone, as if the viewer is seeing the events take place through the same ‘rosy lens’.”
The song itself holds a curious place in the album as the opening track. In the video you can clearly see the band wanting to take things to an eleven, but “Flesh” is a slower song; the first salvo to a killer album, meant to ease you in. So go give it a listen and get lost in that pleasant thought for a while.