The new video for Deerhunter’s “Living My Life” is, well, for lack of a better word, trippy. Directed, photographed and edited by lead singer/guitarist Bradford Cox, the opening series of shots are stills of what appear to be rocks, spiderwebs, some plants, a picture of the moon, and more corrugated rocks, with Cox’s soothing vocals singing “I’m living my life” over and over again.
As the song segues into fruition and Cox declares, “I’m off the grid”, we’re thrown into more contrasting images: a backwoods cabin, a dog perched on a bed, purple flowers. At some point in the trip, guitarist Lockett Pundt is pushed by someone – maybe Cox himself? I’m not quite sure. It’s a mystery. But the attitude plays nicely into the theme of the song, almost to say, “don’t fucking push me, dude, I’m living my life.”
The video finishes with a psychedelic liquid visual hallucination, like looking through the inside of a lava lamp. And just when you hope the trip will never end, the video fades out in a sea of purple. It’s almost better than acid. Almost. —Maya Eslami