The Pixies Can Not Wait For Their Own Video To End In ‘Here Comes Your Man’
If you are in a band during the height of the music video era, are you obligated to care about actually doing a music video? You set out to play the guitar or drums, not spearhead a short form visual project.
While having the option to be creatively involved in a music video or being able to flex your ambition in new directions, the ultimate purpose is still to sell the soap and get the general public to buy your album. No one could be expected to fault you if you felt like you didn’t sign up for all of that extra work involved around the music and not just creating the music itself.
With that said, it’s a whole other side of the coin to be openly & visually checked out to the degree that the Pixies are in the Neil Pollack directed music video for 1989’s ‘Here Comes Your Man.’
Infamously uninterested in doing the whole music video thing around this time, that sentiment is most-evident here. You get a simple video of the band playing in a small studio, standing on a bed of flowers for no reason at all but to add just a pinch of something, anything.
But don’t just take my inference for it. Frank Black & Kim Deal refuse to even lip sync the song entirely. Instead opting to just open their mouths agape to let everyone know damn well they would rather be anywhere else, doing anything else.
A shot of guitarist Joey Santiago doing an instrumental section has the camera right up on his face. His eyes barely concealing the idea that he is seething. He is either about to bust out laughing or screaming. But either way, he’d like to be bust out of this goddamn filming session.
Drummer David Lovering looks like he wants to reach through the screen and strangle me.
A few visual effects attempt to spice things up. Specifically a lens effect that stretches the band’s heads up towards the top of the frame. The effect ends up being overused to the point that it feels like someone discovered the funky setting and had a blast going overboard with it.
But are we being played here? If the band had just made a more average run-of-the-mill music video, I probably wouldn’t be talking about it and fans wouldn’t remember it as strongly.
I do believe they had very little interest in spending time working on a music video. But it’s the fact that they did decide to lean into those feelings that makes ‘Here Comes Your Man’ as memorable as it has become.
All of those emotions of not even wanting to be there are right on the screen for us to take in. That’s a genuine choice. One can argue a genuine creative decision. In wanting to be anywhere else, the Pixies inadvertently made a conscious choice to imbibe their music video with more character & intrigue than if they had just played by the rules the entire time.
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