The art of conversation is a fickle one; one moment you could be flowing like a rap god, the next you could be stuttering like a tractor engine, feeling your cheeks fill with the blood of sheer embarrassment in front of a friend, colleague or, worst of all, a potential mate. Our favourite bearded compadres, Pat Chow know them feels all too well and have the perfect metaphor in their new music video aptly titled, Outta Words.
Opening with the lonely brick walls of a barren apartment, the camera pans toward a simple chair as the introductory strums of the guitars bounce cheerily on your ear drums. Enter our fuzzy Chow vocalist, armed with a comforting bowl of spaghetti goodness, a rather quaint and dull scene, you might say. You’d be wrong, however, for this is no ordinary day for Ben Protasiewicz, our hairy hero.
As the warm bellow of Protasiewicz’s vocal begins to toast your soft marshmallow ears to gooey sweetness, unidentified substances are flung towards him. As the video progresses, it becomes apparent that our singer is under attack from all angles by unidentified flingers of unidentified substances. A plethora of potentially edible solids and liquids cover the subject, infiltrating the deepest nooks of his beard and soaking heavily into the crannies of his clothing.
Soon, Outta Words explodes fireworks in your wanting mind, tantalizing the audio spectrum of your consciousness with mellow distortion and squashed bass, with Ben Protasiewicz’s grizzly bear vocals at the fore. During the exponential build of dynamic and sonic soul, materials continue to fly and our soaked protagonist continues in vain to bleed his lyric.
A perfect metaphor for social awkwardness, Outta Words is the video of your dreams with plenty of furry beards drenched in tasty and unidentifiable foods
There’s something to be said for the metaphorical interplay between the Outta Words video and song, the crushing awkwardness and disappointment of wordlessness comes to life in the humiliation and inveterate hilarity of a shower in custard. As words speaking on this all too familiar feeling fly towards you, ingredients continue to cover our narrator and one can’t help but to chuckle at the aptness and accuracy of the emotional conveyance.
Finding a balance in musical expression and slingshotting it with the taut bow of visual media into the conscious minds of the viewer is no small task but is perfectly wrapped in a dazzling gift with Pat Chow’s unassuming video. The band have outdone themselves as the audio and visual components perfectly melt together in a warming soup of truth and make us feel like we’re not alone in our struggles. Music is always there for us, Pat Chow will always be there for us.
Besides the aptness, there’s also a scene where someone throws a full blown crab into the mix. Keep an eye out for this comedy gem in the latter half of the video when you watch it for the inevitable hundredth time.
To experience even more of this grizzly rock and burning truth, copious amounts are available here on the band’s new LP Are You Okay?
Don’t forget to check the lads out on their album tour:
Friday April 1 – The Bird, Perth
Saturday April 2 – Prince Of Wales, Bunbury
Friday April 8 – Old Bar, Melbourne
Saturday April 9 – Captain Cook Hotel, Sydney
