James Blake and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon are perhaps two of the wooziest crooners in all of indie rock, if not plain ol’ music, and when the two of the team up on a cut on James Blake’s newest album, The Colour in Everything, the result is as predictably tingly as one could hope, though, thanks to the eery pools of electric percussion so beautifully employed by Blake, it’s also kind of spooky — especially because the song seems to be about calling in the slash-and-burn technique to help stimulate emotional growth.
Yes, the song is called “I Need a Forest Fire,” and it’s maybe about a phoenix rising from the ashes of a failed, burned relationship to claim a new, superior form! Actually, scratch that maybe, because the new video makes that interpretation bulletproof: an actual phoenix appears! And it’s about the only concrete, clear image in the whole thing. OK, fine: there’s also Blake’s face being freed from a papier-mâché cast, or something. But mostly the video is a bunch of silhouettes layered atop one another, fading in and out, like some kind of nü—True Detective credits sequence. Still, it manages to be beautiful, even if a little slow-going. And, in that regard, it perfectly evokes Blake’s music.
Watch the video for “I Need a Forest Fire” below.