Canadian melodic hardcore outfit Counterparts have deliciously followed up their 2017 You’re Not You Anymore album with a music video for the title track.
In Counterparts’ own words, the video for “You’re Not You Anymore” is a ‘fairly drastic change’ for this self-described who-gives-a-shit band. Typically the guys are happy to pour their focus into writing music and let the other elements go. For this new video, Counterparts had Josh Halling direct, and are singing the praises of the ‘mini movie’ style music video that has resulted, as opposed to a typical performance-heavy approach.
With an introduction that feels like a sigh after a messy argument, “You’re Not You Anymore” aggressively punches out the details of two lovers and their painful dedication to each other, in the unfolding of a new chapter. With poetic lyrics offered up in rawness, “You’re Not You Anymore” seems to detail a reconciliation, where newness is desired with a ‘mending of past mistakes’.
“Remaining faithful to the flood, our tears have purpose in a drought.”
In the music video, a troubled man is drawn to a box inscribed “I find it hard to feel alive”. The statement, which is a lyric that’s included in You’re Not You Anymore‘s second track “Bouquet”, may be used here to express the weight of depression the man is under, and his desire to break free of it.
Within the inscribed box are black and white pills with instructions to use wisely for the purposes of entering and exiting an alternate space. Having taken a pill, we observe our ‘wanderer’ who finds himself entranced in a sense of aliveness that exists in another plane of existence, in the company of a woman. When he returns to his regular existence outside of that plane, he finds himself numb and unfeeling, drawn back to this enticing and sensory rich experience he had, which was a world away from where he usually exists.
Amplified by Counterparts’ heavy escalation and ache through the track, we watch as the aliveness that the man immerses in soon turns to violence. A swiftly changing dynamic turns a once-beautiful experience upside down. Heart-wrenchingly, the woman takes the final pill of the bottle, which removes her from the alternate reality and leaves him alone, just as he began.
“Sew your skeleton to mine, I’m no good on my own”
It’s intense to witness this progression from brokenness to blissful solution to brokenness again; a powerful expression of Counterparts’ raw account of finding home within chaotic love.
Watch “You’re Not You Anymore”‘s music video, and stream the full album via Spotify:
