We love SPEAK's single, "Gates". In fact, pretty much everybody loves that song. It's earned the band unprecedented levels of exposure, and received love from a wide array of outlets including Ellie Goulding's BBC One radio takeover. The sound on the track is accessible, surely, but never compromising as so many offerings are, and it's set the tone perfectly for SPEAK's debut album, Pedals. With well over 500,000 plays now firmly under the band's belt from that track alone, SPEAK has just released the visuals to accompany it, and they're quite impressive. The video itself is light on story, and instead focuses on employing both stunning visuals and slick editing to drive home the magic embedded in the music. Going this route is for the best, we think, because SPEAK's lyrics are often so finely tuned and finessed that some of that mojo would certainly be lost in the type of shallow narratives which the truncated runtime of a music video necessitates. Watching a mirrored box travel with the band as they embark on some unknown journey feels oddly metaphoric, sure, but since you're never really given a clear explanation for its presence at all, we'd say it's probably for the best that you don't try to read into into it too much (unless you fancy yourself the next Jean Moréas). Rather, it's advised that you just enjoy the sound and set pieces in front of you. Maybe SPEAK will go for something more story-driven in their next video (and knowing these guys, they could probably pull it off), but for "Gates", this was the perfect way to bring the music to life. Watching the band as they traverse landscapes both exotic and familiar breathes energy into the song, and makes it feel new all over again—exactly what a music video sets about accomplishing.
SPEAK