Vondelpark: "Camels"

If you watch the video for “Camels,” you might notice that it bears a certain resemblance to what Radiohead did with “Lotus Flower”: both feature a lone dancer, the sole focus of the camera, interpreting the music in their own distinct ways. Both are visually enthralling—granted, Radiohead did have the inherent appeal of their dancer being Thom Yorke, but even Vondelpark’s faceless subject holds a mesmerising power over the viewer. The moves are at times awkward, even difficult to watch, but even more difficult to turn away from.

Interesting, then, that Vondelpark’s particular fusion of stylised vocals, melancholy electronics, and opportunistic inflections of garage/dubstep-sounding rhythms is just the type of sound one could have conceivably imagined Radiohead exploring with The King of Limbs, and it certainly would have been more welcome than what we got instead: a band disappointingly sticking closely to their existing parameters. Comparisons to label-mate James Blake are sort of lazy, but equally inevitable enough to warrant addressing; such is the way he has shaped music conversation in the past few months. Where Blake succeeds in boiling emotion down to the most fragile, thin beauty, reveling in the space and expanse that silence has to offer, Vondelpark mostly excel in the opposite, filling out such moments with haziness, improperly-punctuated sentences broken up for the sake of carefree reverie rather than artistic merit. “Camels” is merely the most striking example of this—I’m pretty sure it isn’t about camels, neither is it really evocative of them. The song builds unhurriedly from broken guitar strums, adding a two-step rhythm, bursting at the seams with indecipherable utterings, oohs and ahs, wails, distorted vocal melodies cascading around one another.

The video’s focus is distorted, even sullen, a 360 degree, ever-spinning evaluation of whatever is around: evening sunlight, insouciant half-dancing, every housing estate ever in urban Britain. The setting is no coincidence, and is merely another allusion to the dual nature of Vondelpark and “Camels” itself, a simultaneous ghostly peacefulness and intertwining suburban despair. And while it may seem petty to look elsewhere when concluding that one artist is doing such an efficient job blending these feelings into purpose, I can’t help but wish Thom Yorke would latch onto it, too.