Partnerships are tricky, especially when it comes to creative projects that are typically littered with strong points of view from strong personalities. When those perspectives don’t align or complement each other, things can fall apart in a hurry.
When they do, you get something like the video for “You can go again” that we’re helping Collections of Colonies of Bees premiere today.
We already knew the track as part of Celebrities, the album released by the beloved Milwaukee band this past July. It’s a bona fide bop that urges you to move from the very first line (“She can dance”), not to mention the groovy as hell bass-and-drum combo and a chorus that feels like one big release.
So why not just make dance the focal point of the entire video?
Joe Shea and Tom Grimm made that wise decision as part of their first directorial team-up, which was a very “you got chocolate in my peanut butter” merging of elements. While both of them are skilled photographers/videographers, it was Shea’s connection to independent film and Grimm’s to the local music scene that combined to make a beautiful end result.
Much of the beauty comes from Ezra Mercy, who used a mostly empty Vivarium as a performance space to spin, slide, stomp and generally exude the kind of joy we all feel but rarely let loose. Mercy’s choreography takes the music of “You can go again” and turns it into motion. Or, more accurately, it makes the two aspects feel singular — a theme of the project as a whole.
Strong collaboration between partners in the film and music community was the only way we could make this video,” Grimm said, “and in my opinion that adds to just how perfectly it turned out. This video is proof positive that being able to pivot on a dime is often what makes the creative process such a beautifully unique human experience.”
You could apply that same description to the video for “You can go again,” which is available for your viewing enjoyment below. The audio-only version is track two on Celebrities, the latest album from Collections of Colonies of Bees that you can find in a few places, including the Castle Danger Records website.
