MUSIC VIDEO REVIEW
Halsey is one of those girls.
You know the ones: They can
rock the mystical shoulder
tattoos,
the Smurf-
blue hair,
the elusive
ultra-pixie
cut, the
oversized
band
T-shirts
— and
still look
completely
irresistible.
The thing is, though,
Halsey’s music is too
intelligent, too edgy to
be pigeonholed into that
basic category of “hipster.”
Perhaps this stereotyping
is what she and her clan
are rebelling against in
the post-apocalyptic “New
Americana” video. It’s
intense, and for the most part,
convincingly so.
As our leading lady is
chilling with her heathens in
an underground layer, doing
push-ups and smoking and
kissing people aggressively
(typical), she’s captured by
some fascist dude with a
really big gun. He drags her
through the rainforest, ties
her to a tree and douses her
in gasoline: apt preparations
for hipster homicide. Alas,
Halsey won’t settle for that —
eccentricity will not be stifled
ASTRALWERKS
C+
New
Americana
Halsey
Astralwerks
— and in comes La Resistance
to save the fire-lit night.
All of this is effective in
eliciting true fear for the
singer — one simply must
watch until the end to
find out what goes down.
“New Americana” is the
perfect backing song for
the cinematography, too, as
both the video and music
extract from each other equal
amounts of raw, penetrating
power.
But as the good-looking
group is sprinting to safety
at the end, one can’t help
but think of the typicality
of it all. The video straight
up looks like it’s from “The
Hunger Games” if Urban
Outfitters had been the
executive producer. In a
time where sexy sci-fi tales
of young-adult upheaval are
more than overdone, Halsey’s
originality is best suited to a
far less clichéd format.
- MELINA GLUSAC
Too intelligent
and edgy to be
a hipster.
4B — Thursday, October 1, 2015
the b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com