"Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all" - John Keats
"Beauty is only skin deep" - A Cliche
We use our skin for myriad purposes. It is a metaphor for our strength, it is both literal and figurative protection for us, and it is a canvas upon which we can paint the pieces of our souls we cannot express in words. Our skin is the first thing a new person in our lives will see about us, no matter how much of it we choose to show. Skin is more than a membrane keeping our hearts from pumping life straight onto the ground. Skin is the way we communicate, the way we tempt vision and touch. Skin is the most honest thing about ourselves, unless of course it isn't.
The deception starts right away, as the muted chords and picked guitar figure Arno presents us evoke the memory of "The Boys Of Summer", only to blot out the sun and replace it with a dramatic, Gothic atmosphere that gives us the heaviest song of the band's oeuvre. Combining stomping, arena-sized rock with hints of symphonic metal, the song pushes and pulls against itself, slowing and speeding like a timed heartbeat as each breath of life-affirming air enters, cycles, and exits stale. In that way, the song is a draining experience, in the good sense.
VK sings to us about lies and deception, hopes and dreams, that all live under the very skin we are clinging to. So are we digging our nails in to keep hold of a person who doesn't really exist, scraping away the veneer to expose the truth underneath? Or does our skin seal in our hurts and regrets, which seep out and darken our blood when we are cut? That is the core of the song, the question of whether we can ever represent ourselves in full, or whether every relationship we enter is a baptism by fire, and we feel the heat in our eyes.
That word will pop up again to describe the video, which the cool young people might say is 'straight fire', which I say as someone neither young nor cool enough to know if that is even a saying anymore. We're presented with what lies on either side of the barrier, with VK and Arno performing atop the LA hills in beautiful sunshine, then diving into purple velvet and black lace to experience the darkness under the wrapping paper. VK's spidery dress reveals the stories she has written on her skin, and as her emotions writhe from her body, I'm left feeling the same sense of mystery I felt so long ago, when I would sit on my own piece of purple (almost) velvet and take in the sights and sounds of MTV. They weren't often this good.
The weight of Arno's guitar and the volume of VK's voice project an epic scope, and then proceed to fill every inch of the air and screen. The song doesn't rage, but there is a searing quality that stopped me in my tracks. In 1925, audiences gasped when Lon Chaney's makeup was revealed as The Phantom Of The Opera. Today, I knowingly smile when VK keeps writing songs that anchor the orbit of my own thoughts and works. She and Arno keep making music that evokes a true reaction, which much like the proliferation of CGI in movies, gets harder to achieve as we grow more jaded by the day. I don't take that for granted.
Skin is an apt metaphor for The Spider Accomplice to focus on. With this song to sit alongside "Crawl", we can see how the various roles skin plays are akin to the various styles the band takes on. In their recent singles, they have tackled Gothic overtones, power ballads, bittersweet pop, and even more. I started this out with that cliche about beauty only being skin deep. Skin can be beautiful, as VK has proven, but we can't be fooled into thinking the wrapping paper is the whole gift. Skin wraps around a soul, and it's those who try too hard to shine who wind up too slippery to hold onto.
VK sings that "time revealed the answer". Whether it's the lacy web, or the tack of LA sweat, we'll keep our grip on The Spider Accomplice. That much I already know.
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