Premiere: Opposite Sex Unveil Eerie New Video For 'Vicarious Life'

Dunedin trio Opposite Sex have surfaced with an intriguing new video for 'Vicarious Life', a song plucked from their sophomore album Hamlet. Shot and directed by New York-based filmmaker Guy Kozak, the clip documents a full-scale war re-enactment in Pennsylvania with grainy, slow-moving Super-8 footage forming an eerie juxtaposition between both the tragic and absurd - all soundtracked by the song which walks the line between sweetness and discordance. We are delighted to give the lip its online premiere here at UTR, watch it below and then read our interview with drummer/vocalist Tim Player...

The video is an almost-serene into a war reenactment. Can you tell us a little bit about the clip and how it came together?

The music video is made up of documentation from an reenactment event that took place in New Oxford, Pennsylvania, Sept 2016. The reenactment is based on the original 1944 event in which an Allied Convoy liberated a small town occupied by German Nazis.

What made you want to pair this footage with ‘Vicarious Life’ of all the songs on Hamlet?

The decision to pair the footage with the song was Guy's idea. He initially suggested it. The band, after some deliberation, agreed that it was a good idea. Admittedly the parallels could be viewed as somewhat overblown. In terms of historical scale (WWWII vs a rock song) there's an obvious disconnect. Nonetheless, as with much appropriation based tactics the intention of marrying disparate materials isn't to create a seamless exquisite thing. The intent was to get some layering going on, aggravate trite readings, that sort thing. I guess we all wanted the thing to be jarring, but in a way that avoided juvenile or trite shock tactics. Further, explicit content probably wouldn't work for this band. This is something Guy seemed to understand intuitively. We're not industrial or noise after all.

Have any of you delved into the world of cosplay or re-enactment yourselves?

No, not really. But if anyone was going to get on this bandwagon it'd probably be me.

You guys were one of two bands (along with Bloodbags) to go and play Gonerfest in Memphis late last year, how was that experience? What was the highlight of your trip to the States?

Gonerfest was cool. We played their main stage on the Saturday night. Everyone there seemed up for a good time. The only drag was that we didn't have that long in Memphis. I think we would've all liked to see some of the prosaic sights around the city. It was charming ramshackle place. It had proper cool people that made you feel like a total square. The traffic wasn't too crazy. It also had proper guns. I could've stayed on for a few weeks (or years) to be honest.

As for the one highlight it'd be hard to say. Cropped Out in Louisville was real sweet, so was The Empty Bottle in Chicago, so was New York. I suppose it was all over too quickly. Really, for me, the highlight was just playing every night with Lucy and Reg, doing a good job and having a few beers after the show. Without a doubt we played some of our best gigs while touring.

Notable low points would be missing Fred & Toody Cole and Royal Trux due to clashes.

What’s coming up for Opposite Sex, any recording or touring on the cards?

Aside from playing the usual local gigs the most notable thing was us recording a new album in January with Tom Bell at Chicks Hotel. It's very close to being finished. It was a very enjoyable experience. And the product is good. The next stage would be to scope the situation for labels, and extend on existing connections, however slight these are. Once this is in place we will most certainly tour again. And given what a good time the US was we would love to go back to the East Coast and Mid-west. Some talk about Europe as well.