Grimes: "Vanessa"

Though I was plenty fond of that fanmade, Godard-copping video already, there’s no denying that the official music video for “Vanessa,” lead single from the forthcoming Grimes/D’eon 12” split and quite possibly the strongest track she’s put her name to thus far, takes the task of visualizing the distinctive Grimes aesthetic to a whole other level. Not that I’m really surprised: here Claire Boucher herself assumes directorial responsibilities, applying the characteristically personal and ardently DIY approach to film that we’ve come to expect from all aspects of her music. The result is a video that is simultaneously accessible and weird, gorgeous and creepy, conventional and subversive—in short, it’s exactly like the music it accompanies.

In much the same way that in a Grimes album one hears trace elements of mainstream pop music stirring just beneath weirder surfaces, snatches of pure convention which come into focus briefly before being subsumed again by the surrounding abstraction, “Vanessa” often flirts with the standard practices of pop music videos, always to great effect. Boucher’s endearing dance moves provide the perfect counterpoint to the almost Silent Hill-like stuff with which she’s cross-cut. At times this foray into pop-art spectacle borders on music video territory already well-worn by Lady Gaga, but any parallels to that end only serve to underscore the difference, in quality as well as type, between pop stars pretending to be weird and genuinely weird artists pretending to be—and thereby subverting, undermining, being critical of—pop stars. I’ll side with the latter every time.