Anytime I hear a musician playing the most common style of “indie,” I associate them with Great Wolf Lodge. Having never entered the premises of a Great Wolf Lodge, I use childhood memories of their commercials as a frame of reference. On TV, it seemed like a mini-metropolis of a waterpark, a place for interesting folks to share their stories and ideas amidst the Lodge’s faux-cottage decor. Looking back at what I missed out on, it merely seems intended for white people donning clean clothes who enjoy entering buildings.
Clean clothes are pretty good sometimes, but if you hunger for something even fancier, Fencing from Winnipeg has shared a video for their new song, “Dresses.” Made by a frequent visual collaborator, Ryan Steel, it opens like a cheap slideshow. Pictures of a phone surrounded by various tools while singer Isaac Tate murmurs: “Combination lock stuck open/Passwords for my online banking information.” From there, it gets surreal—a kaleidoscope of pictures and footage swirling under and above one another. One of the best shots is clearly someone else’s YouTube video (with the “Related Videos” area boldly included).
Like the song itself, the skillfully edited DIY video for “Dresses” has a series of tangents hidden beneath a mundane sheen. Boxes of found footage clack among the eerily peaceful groove, exploding into something powerful alongside the brisk instrumental conclusion. Fencing uses genuinely humorous juxtaposition within and outside of their impressive sound. The section where the drums get distorted is a triumph in tone. I sure hope they are working hard on that album they mentioned in the press release because the only part of them that reminds me of Great Wolf Lodge thus far is their glitchy B-side for “Dresses,” opening with the rhyme ”Top ten water parks/Top ten landmarks.”
