15: Like A Pen - The Knife

okay is that a vape wand oh shit i thought i was turning that down

no is that not working can you still hear me yeah bacon bacon vaping bacon

hello and welcome to we can't rewind we've gone too far a podcast where a scots man an

and a Bulgarian review

the most terriblest

silly as fuck

weirdest music videos

Hi I'm Neil

Hi I'm Neil

Hi I'm Dave

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That was really good

I'm in a different

position today

in terms of

hold on

sounds a bit weird

I'm in a different room

i'm sort of reclining on the sofa rather than being hunched back on the uh really mediocre chair

that's definitely a good position to be in yeah more open when i get eventually my laptop which

hopefully will happen maybe by the end of the month beginning of next month oh yeah that's right i

will be able to do that it'll be great i can record from my bed as well oh you could do it lying

don't you could record from the toilet can you imagine oh that would be so echo it would be horrible

I had the acoustics that sound premium.

Yeah, I'm just going to take a bubble bath.

Well, drinking a glass of wine.

Champagne, excuse me, wine.

No, it's whiskey from the bottle.

Judging by previous performance, yeah.

Actually, Nelly, when you were talking about the whiskey earlier,

were you talking about, you know the whiskey you see in bars,

where it's like the novelty size bottles?

Just a standard 10-year single malt.

I see.

Classy.

Okay, should I do the intro?

Yeah, I've realized my microphone was coming through my actual laptop's microphone.

Are you hearing me alright just now?

Yeah, no, I do.

That'll be wild.

Loud and clear.

We can also hear the seagulls behind you.

It's a soundscape.

Literally, the moment you started talking, we could hear a seagull behind you.

I actually did.

I was trying not to laugh.

Today's episode is sponsored by the seagulls of Cornwall.

Protect your chips.

Today we're watching the video for Like a Pen by the Swedish synth-pop band The Knife,

whose lead singer you might know better as Fever Ray these days.

I didn't actually know that.

Fever Ray is the same singer.

You might want to watch the video before listening to this episode

because it's a bit hard to explain why human communication is one of those videos.

Yeah.

I'm sharpening my body like a pig

Come on, I need to show it

Something to smile for a lid

See if I wrap it, if I wipe it

Dividing with one single head

Nothing's wrong, you like the feeling

I am all over the lid

Like a Pen was a single from the album Silent Shout, released in 2006, directed by Andrews

Nielsen, who has an impressive resume of previous videos including The Knife, Fever

Ray, MGMT, Goldfrap, Josie Gonzalez, White Lies, Peter Bjorn, Jorn, Moby and Bright Eyes.

Good selection.

He has also dabbled in commercials, including everyone's favourite four-letter supermarket

Aldi and that weird Snickers advert with Elton John.

The video for Like a Pen is a mixed animation odyssey following a character who I like to

a pencil-wielding beanbag person

as they commit gratuitous acts of vandalism

while pursued by some sort of unknown aggressor.

Is this what is happening?

I didn't get the unknown aggressor thing.

I never really twigged on to that either

because I've seen it, I love this video,

I've seen this video hundreds of times,

but I never really twigged on to it

until I was watching it for this

and trying to figure something to say about it, as you know.

But it does seem like he's getting chased

at a few points during the video.

Yeah, by someone with a knife.

Well, someone.

Something with a knife.

One of them's got a gun,

There's three little angry cartoon guys chasing him.

One of them's got a gun.

I think one of those must have a knife.

Or a pen.

Or a pen, yeah.

Pens can be sharp.

If anyone's in the faculty, they will get a reference.

Well, that is the thing.

It's called like a pen, but he is running around with a pencil.

But maybe that's just because pencils look better when they're animated.

I don't know.

A pencil is still a pen.

Is it?

Well, pen-sil.

Like a writing implement didn't have the same ring to it.

Doesn't sound as good.

The beginning of the song is literally sharp my body like a pen.

But you can't sharpen a pen.

How does that work?

Maybe they realise that after they wrote the song

and they're making the video and they're like,

wait a minute, this lyric makes no sense.

Or maybe it's just a translation thing.

Probably that, to be honest.

Nah, I wouldn't say so.

Like, I'm sure that...

Where are they from?

Sweden?

I think they're Swedish.

Scandinavia.

Scandinavian people speak English well enough

to know the difference between pen and pencil.

You're putting my body like a pencil.

They could have made that work.

Can we just agree that Scandinavian bands

have the weirdest as fuck,

like, ritually weirdest as fuck music videos?

Yeah, they're definitely not afraid of going about the real.

I mean, have you seen anything from ABBA?

There's a couple of songs by them on the list of this podcast.

You know, I don't think I've ever seen an ABBA music video

apart from one or two of the really famous ones

where it's just a bunch of Scandinavian-looking people singing.

So I've not seen any of their weird ones,

so that could be quite interesting.

It must be.

This has to be a weird one.

Maybe the first ever music video they put out.

Or even the last one they put out.

First and the last have to be the worst.

Did they not like reunite recently, I think a couple of years ago or something?

That's what I mean.

The last ones will be the worst.

I mean, look at that John Travolta rubbish.

Yeah, but the difference is that John Travolta can't write or sing how ABBA do.

Like, I can't remember the name of that guy, but the one who writes every single Swedish

pop song.

So there's only one person responsible for all of this.

Well, one of them.

I can't remember which name.

I generally can't.

I'm sorry, Swedish fans out there.

You can revoke my Kia badge.

And she does have an Ikea badge.

Not anymore.

I haven't had it for four years, but I used to.

No, I had to hand it back, fortunately.

Although, actually, currently I'm wearing a T-shirt from Ikea times.

The Ikea times.

But yeah, one of the other guys, he's like a very prolific singer-songwriter.

And he's written, I think he wrote the musical Chess as well.

I just presumed there was just something in the Swedish DNA that was just good at writing pop songs.

That long, cold winter, nothing else to do.

Yeah, well, yeah, that could be it.

But if it was all down to one guy, then that makes even more sense.

Well, we can look into that, but I think we're going into it.

We're going off the rails.

But I did look on Wikipedia and the knife are Swedish.

Yes.

The voice of the lead singer is so Scandinavian that you can absolutely hear the accents.

Yeah.

Like, it just reminds me of Roy Xo.

And also the music video is so weird as fuck.

But yeah, back to this one.

Basically, there's a little guy who looks like he's a walking beanbag.

He's running around graffitiing stuff with his wee pencil.

Not a euphemism.

Also not a wee pencil.

It's quite a big pencil, I'd say, yeah.

He seems to be sort of popping dimensions

in the sense that the animation style changes every two minutes.

I don't know.

I'm just of the opinion that he's some sort of interdimensional graffiti artist.

Well, personally, I really like just the type.

Yeah, I said types of animation, but just the types of art.

It kind of changes because occasionally you have...

Like when you have different like cutouts that are stuck together.

Collage, that's the word.

Collage.

Like you have animation, you have kind of collage types.

And yeah, you have, as you said, live action mixed with animation.

And you have a stop motion like Play-Doh.

It's basically someone, I'm sure they had an idea.

I'm not sure what the idea was, but it just looks fun.

And it looks like they had a hell of a fun doing that.

I quite liked it.

It was refreshing after, well, the fuck we watched last time.

I wonder if it was only one animator

or it was a bunch of different animators doing it.

It kind of reminds me if you've ever seen that film,

Waking Life, where it's all rotoscoped.

Rotoscoped?

Rotoscoped.

It's constantly changing because it was such an ambitious thing

to do at the time with the technology.

They basically had like 10 animators or something like that

and each one of them has their own style.

So it's just constantly just popping in between different styles of animation.

How about Waking Life?

What an acid?

I've watched Waking Life, not an acid, but another psychedelic.

And it was fun.

I watched it both sober and drunk.

Have you seen it, Neo?

No, I don't think I have.

It's by Richard Link...

Linklater.

Linklater, thank you.

The guy who did Boyhood and some other things.

I like it more as a teen right now.

I just think it's very much like I'm edgy, the movie.

I think Ascanner Darkly is a better movie overall

because it's a similar style of animation

but it's also just a coherent story.

Sorry, what's the name?

as Keanu Darkly.

Keanu Darkly.

It's based on a Philip K. Dick book

and it's fairly faithful to the book.

And Keanu Reeves is in it.

Who doesn't love Keanu Reeves?

Anyway, back to the video.

We just keep on going.

I think that's the problem

with videos like this

Sledgehammer or GoWaste.

There's a lot to talk about

the video itself,

but also they just kind of

like you say one thing

and just go off

because it's so referential.

Just saying Jonah's spiral

makes you think.

Yeah.

I don't think it was

necessarily planned.

I kind of think it was

it looked like quite an organic process i think they obviously knew how this bean character potato

whatever looks like a spud to me you know they knew how that started and you know how it ended but it

just feels like a like a dreamy trip because that's how it ends it ends with the um the character in

bed sort of waking up perhaps it's sort of like a self-inflicted hallucinating psychedelic dream that

this character has decided to take us on but i i don't think i don't think it was i don't know my

opinion is it doesn't look like it's structured but probably it was meticulously planned out and

thought out that way but yeah i don't i can't see a pattern in it the video starts with the wee guy

waking up and it ends with him going to sleep myself probably slightly stretched interpretation

this is just sort of all in a day's work for him whatever this strange surreal dystopian world he

lives in he's some sort of freedom fire i think this character is actually banksy this is what

Banksy actually looks like he's an interdimensional potato.

I don't know, I find it a bit frustrating that you can't find any information on the people who worked on it.

Because it seems like, well, clearly the director didn't do all the work themselves.

Why did they not actually talk about who created it and who helped with animation and blah blah blah, storyboarding?

It's the same thing as they did on Sledgehammer, where we were like, oh, those people, good.

We can actually go and find those people and find what they've done.

It's a shame that they didn't get much credit for it

unless they wanted to be anonymous.

Because I think I did read the knife.

For years, they basically didn't perform live

and they didn't usually show their faces in music videos

and stuff like that.

So unless that's maybe the point,

throwing it out there and just be like,

here's the thing, we're not going to tell you anything about it.

We've talked about this before.

Like it was the Sledgehammer video

where it had the list of credits at the end.

It's just as a general thing,

it's a bit shit that when you make a movie video,

people just don't get any credit

unless you really go looking for it.

unless they made those animations,

which I'll argue that they didn't.

It's just mean.

Like, every single artist was like,

oh yeah, I absolutely don't want to get any credit for this work.

Yeah, fair enough.

I know I'm being a bit cynical,

I'm sure that it's overthinking,

but it wouldn't be nice to have a starting point.

Like, in my talking points,

I mentioned Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared,

because a lot of things are like...

It kind of came out at the same time, didn't it?

Like, mid-2000s.

I think Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared might be a little bit later.

Maybe. So maybe that was just referencing this video in some sort of sort.

But there's a lot of like points where it's like, oh yeah, this is literally, it feels like taken out of an episode of Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared.

It does. Yeah, it does have a bit of a Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared sort of vibe to it, which I only actually saw at the beginning of last year.

And oh my God. Have you seen that, Neil?

Which one?

Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared. It's like a YouTube miniseries thing.

I'm not sure.

Time is a tool you can put on the wall or wear it on your wrist.

The past is far behind us.

The future doesn't exist.

Oh, what's the time?

It's quarter to nine.

Time to have a bath.

What do you mean?

We're already clean.

Scrub, scrub, scrub till the water's brown.

It's like Sesame Street, but on hard drugs.

Oh no, this looks terrifying to me.

I know.

It's worse than the initial impressions we'd give you as well.

Well, it's amazing, but it's also horrifying at the same time.

But at least there's information about it.

you know

this was created by

whatever artist

I think there's Danish

Scandinavian again

maybe

that has

that has songs in it

could we

could we justify

Don't Hug Me I'm Scared

as a music video

oh

special episode

oh

so other stuff

going on in this video

there's a

at one point it cuts to

a bus which appears

to be made out of

a human face

human centipede bus

yeah human centipede bus

because there's a couple

of wee characters

inside it bouncing up and down

and the pencil

again for some reason

oh because it's like a pen

clearly

oh wait a minute

they're saying like a pen

They're not saying Apey.

They're saying like Apey.

Okay, technically fine.

Yeah, sure.

Glad we saw it there.

I personally got...

I can't remember which Miyazaki movie was it.

The one that there's a giant cat face boss.

Scott.

I think it's Spirited Away.

Which Miyazaki movie had the big cat boss?

Uh, Totoro.

Oh, Totoro.

Yes, thank you.

Totoro.

Not Spirited Away.

I confirmed that Scott from Miyazaki Corner.

It kind of reminded me of if you ever saw Adventure Time.

Speaking of things that you watch when you're high.

Yeah, I remember there was a shot in that where there's, I can't quite remember,

it was like some sort of flying creature who'd been cut in half

and then he tells the main character to get in because his insides are habitable.

I have not seen this, no.

Yeah, I remember watching that going, it's a kid's show.

What the fuck?

It's not a kid's show, is it?

I think, yeah, it's technically a kid show, but it's clearly, clearly marketed towards the stoner demographic.

The wee guy, the wee beanbag potato guy, he draws text at one point in the video,

and it also pops up in a gravestone earlier.

Maybe that's the signature of the artist or something.

Squiggly line, M-I-L, more squiggly lines, O.S.S.S.

I couldn't find any information about what that actually meant,

but I just thought it was interesting because it pops up twice.

So maybe that is the animator sticking his credits on there somewhere.

I genuinely thought only about the Zodiac Killer.

Is that the kind of thing the Zodiac Killer would do?

Maybe it means something to the Swedish art scene.

Maybe they recognize it.

Maybe we need to ask, hey, if you're part of the Swedish art scene,

please drop us an email and let us know.

Go to a forecast at gmail.com.

I was trying to think that maybe the video has some sexual overtones,

or undertones rather, because a couple of scenes were a bit like,

hmm, that looks like something that, you know, X, Y, and Z.

I don't know if it was on purpose or whether it might have been funny when I watched it first.

I don't know.

Like, for example, the bus looks like butts.

Yeah, it does.

Oh, yeah, it does actually.

Now you say it.

A face butt.

Face butt.

Button, the profile, face on the front.

Business in the front, party in the back.

Yes.

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if there is something.

Although I did realise it was in the Christmas episode with the John Travolta and whatever we did before that, I can't remember.

but I realised it had been two episodes.

We'd watched videos with no intense sexual overtone,

so that's good to be back.

What do you even mean?

John Travolta is just sexual from his existence.

He just oozy sexuality from his sprayed on hair.

So what about red, blue and yellow?

I don't get that talking point.

Live action, and he's drawing these colours on the tree.

Well, yellow, blue, red, yellow, blue, red.

Oh, yeah, I guess.

Does that mean anything, or am I just reading far too much?

It'd be a flag of some description.

Oh, just bright colours.

But speaking of those trees, actually,

I think it is quite cool, the effect of how they did it.

You can see that the actual colours on the trees

are just from some sort of wrap around the branches.

It's like a tape, like a masking duct tape.

It's a really cool way to animate colour onto a tree.

That was pretty cool.

Yeah, I quite like that scene in general,

just because it's a total clusterfuck of different stuff.

He runs out, he's in the real world, kind of.

He's still holding an animated pen, I think,

but he's sweating animated sweat,

and then an animated hand pops out,

but he's in the real world, and the lights work really well with it.

It's that scene in general.

Yeah, I mean,

the whole video has a lot of

enjoyable, weird ass scenes

that, like, literally

is a second here

then gone

a second later.

It's a bit of a

mindfuck,

bit hurts the eyes,

but...

I'm trying to remember

the first time I saw this.

I'm pretty sure I saw this

on MTV2

years and years ago.

I was just...

TV2.

Yeah.

Back when MTV played music videos,

I was just kind of

idly watching it

and this came on.

What the fuck

is this going on?

We used to be,

like, you would have been,

like, what,

16, 17 when it came out?

Something like that.

Yeah, something like that.

I'm target audiences for this.

So I wish I had drunk when I first watched the video.

I'm sure in most situations I would enjoy the living shit out of it.

But now I'm just wondering in which circle of hell was this made in?

Because clearly it was by the same condemned source who created Don't Hug Me I'm Scared.

Possibly.

But the video itself is cool.

Like it's very cool but also very confusing.

And at times it just makes me wonder if they didn't try to look and sound deeper than the video actually is.

Bright colors and hypnotic imagery mix up to create something I could only describe as a visual experience.

just sit down take your lsd and enjoy the ride a bit biased for this one because i absolutely love

the song that kind of colors my expectations a little bit the video totally matches the madness

of the song the constant changing of the art style and stuff like that is just kind of cool to behold

and i quite like this uh fictional narrative i've made in my head of this dimension hopping

graffiti artist as well so i i don't hate this video and i don't love it i'd never heard of the

band before this suggestion came up for us to sort of review this and i listened to the song without

watching the video and i think i preferred it than the sort of trip that you get to go through with

the video i don't think it really matches the um the song but it's not bad it's not good but it's

it's definitely entertaining and i i liked it it was kind of nightmarish feel to me but i think it's

something that people should kind of see and it's definitely a conversation starter let's say that

i actually have a question to you on that because the first time i watched it i did watch it with the

sound of just because I am somewhat familiar with the knife and I'm not massive on their music so

I kind of knew what to expect I guess what you mean but do you think it would be better if it's

watched without the music on first you can kind of enjoy it as for what it is yeah so if you

disconnect the the video with the song it's I feel that it doesn't really match up with you know each

other it feels like the the song was put with that video that was made before which it obviously

clearly wasn't. I think it's because the video is trying to be like a dream. So it's so open-ended

and anything can happen. And the only limitation is really the imagination within a dream. I kind

of think that's why it works in all cases. But I just think there's just too much going on for me

to kind of try to focus on one thing. And me looking at it from a sort of a critical eye,

there isn't like a pause or a break. It's a constant barrage of going into one thing and

pulling out of another then in an animated world then you're in a real world and you're back in

then you're on a tv then you're in a forest and you know it's quite hyper it's quite hyper realistic

and it's quite tiring to kind of watch but it's not that it's bad in that regard it's just it's

quite an it's an intense video that's interesting because i think this was i first saw this it was

literally the first time i'd ever heard the knife so i kind of had the opposite reaction however i

was like 16 at the time so that probably factors into it quite a lot so the best moment for

was the stop motion drawing on the tree sequence was quite cool and the worst moment is the couple

of scenes with negative colours because they kind of hurt my eyes because it's already like very

bright and in your face and those negative colours just made me kind of cringe a bit. Best moment is

one minute 55 when he sort of emerges as like a real life guy in a suit into the forest and he's

running around as a guy in a suit but he's also sweating animated sweat and he's got a big cartoon

pen and then he starts graffitying the trees and all that stuff.

I just thought a bit was cool.

Worst moment is one minute in, it cuts to these kind of weird sort of pictures of people

who look sort of slightly morphed or disfigured or whatever.

And it just reminds me of something you'd see on flashlights 15 years ago or whatever.

Stupid sort of semi-edgy internet stuff.

Meh, not a huge fan of that.

Bit of salad fingers.

Yeah, a little bit.

Yeah, his favourite part was the bombing dancing human bus.

I just thought that was quite satisfying to watch them just bob around in the background

that cuts to like the front angle.

I thought that was quite fun.

It was a little bit terrifying at the same time,

but yeah, if I had to pick a worse moment,

it would just be the sort of the pace of the actual video.

It just didn't really have a time to breathe

or just stop and linger on like a certain,

you know, part for too long.

It was pretty much just whipping around.

So I think if I had to say anything bad,

it would be that.

But that's personal opinion rather than a,

this is bad because of that.

I do have an honorary, a runner-up bass bit,

which I'd forgotten about,

which is a 1 minute 52.

There's a drawing of a wee guy's face or something like that.

And then it looks like the animation is doing kind of a,

what's the word, is it, Rude Goldberg machine?

Where it's like one thing hits another and then it all leads to that.

Yeah.

It looks like that's all happening and it just leads to

this sort of Play-Doh clay shooting snot up this guy's nose.

This is definitely something I've never seen before.

So yeah, I'll give an honorary mention to that.

It's an eye for me just because I love it.

Eye for me as well.

Yeah, why not?

Let's say eye for me.

It's definitely worth saying.

suit the board.

Yeah, you may have noticed we're not doing the video that we said we're going to be doing.

That's because it was shit.

We're now going to cut out the bit where we say what video we're going to do.

And so it'll just be a mystery.

And you can just find out when you find out.

Join us next time when we'll be reviewing another horrible music video.

Say goodbye, everyone.

Bye.

Goodbye.

See you later.

*outro music*