Warning: This post contains spoilers.
One thing music videos can do that no other medium really can is present a story fragment - something that could be part of a full narrative, but the viewer only sees a piece of. Inside of that piece can contain plot twists, plays on our expectations, and character development, all fit into the short running time of a music video. Director Ellis Bahl has explored this style of storytelling with video like "Breezeblocks" by Alt-J, and he has a new addition to the genre with the video for "Gold" by Sir Sly.
The video opens with a man waking up on the ground, outside an abandoned house. He has a flashlight by his side, and after he sees some activity at the window he fell from, he starts exploring the house. It turns out someone else is in the house with a flashlight as well, and although we never see them, our main character avoids him until deciding to eventually confront him in an upstairs room.
At the conclusion of the video, we find out that the person who has been searching the house is actually the main character himself, caught in a loop of falling out of a window, exploring the house/hiding from himself, and discovering the other person is himself, causing him to fall out the window. On repeat viewings, it becomes clear that there are probably multiple versions of himself, all just slightly behind one another, so at the time one is falling out the window, there are a few downstairs avoiding each other.
This piece could be part of a larger narrative, and we get hints of that with scraps of paper that the character reads but we never see. Story fragments like this always leave more questions than answers, but the piece we see is satisfying on its own.
The video is a smart accompaniment to the track, which has a pretty dramatic, cinematic quality to it that builds up to an ending section that is perfect for a revelation.
The video for "Gold" was produced by Danielle Hinde and Jeremy Hill for Doomsday Entertainment. You can find "Gold" on Sir Sly's Gold EP.
