Wet Little Bird music video review

★★★

Directed by: #JeleRaus

Written by: #WhereOrchidsGoesToDie

Starring: #Mebitek, #MarianaMillapan

Film review by William Hemingway

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Still from Wet Little Bird

At a first pass Where Orchids Goes To Die may seem to be just a band with deficient English grammar, but not so says Mebitek, the gas masked driving force behind this electronic duo. As he tells it, Orchids refers to some eponymous figure who apparently inhabits the stories and songs that the band sing about and can therefore be considered a muse and inspiration for what we hear.

This track, Wet Little Bird, tells the story of Mogoro's Maidens which Mebitek says is a traditional local tale in Sardinia, the part of the world from which he hails. The tale tells of a group of maidens dressed in white who walk solemnly each night in procession from the main church to 'Su Cramu'. One maiden walks apart from the others, held back by the heaviness of her wet hair, which is showered by the tears of her mother who weeps for her death. She pleads with an old woman to ask her mother to stop crying as her wet hair stops her from reaching her sisters. Orchids takes his/her place amongst all of this as a symbol of loving those who have been lost and Mebitek's musical persona seems to embody this.

While the song itself is a great little dirge, packed with symbolism and meaning, the video by comparison has very little going on past the obvious allusions to the maiden of the story and Death. Mebitek and singer Mariana Millapan stare at us out of the blackness like a modern day Eurythmics, cradled in soft focus and film noir as they play out their death march. Millapan is garbed in the white dress of the maiden, sitting solemnly in a chair that she seems unable to break free from, while Mebitek dances around her in his fiendish gas mask, pawing at her face and her body in what seems like anticipation of receiving her into his realm. But there's no more to it than that.

Admittedly, the video fits the song well and the kooky duo, used to performing their roles on stage in front of admiring fans, both play their parts well, but in terms of scope and scale the film does come across as being rather simplistic. Shot in one take the camera hovers and lurches, moves in and pulls back, shifts in and out of focus and leads us from hands to face to chest to gas mask, and it does all that very well, it's just that's as far as it goes.

Obviously there are budget constraints to consider from a small start-up band with a niche following, but it would be nice if in the future once 'Orchids' achieve the success they deserve, the video could be remade telling the story of the maidens on the streets of Cagliari where we can really get a feeling for what they're singing about.

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