Saturday, May 14, 2011

Backup Dancers From Hell: The Cranberries - “Dreams”


We start off with somebody throwing a bunch of fake frogs into some water, followed by some loose pearls. Right away I’m thinking, okay, this is the song where they do that banshee wailing at the end. Who knows what they’re going to do in the video. Then we have an image of the lead singer, Dolores, appear in the water, with her looking deathly and pale and upside down. Yep, things could get very weird.

Quick shot of Dolores, right-side up and looking confused, then another ghostly image of Dolores possibly drowning in someone’s laundry water. (That stuff in the background? I think they’re socks. Or jock straps. Something that we really don’t need to be seeing right now.) Then we slowly fade to the real Dolores again, and she starts to sing.

And she does this for a very long time, just standing there in her pixie haircut and excessive earrings. Sure, we get a few shots of the other band members, but none of them are all that interesting and we keep going back to Dolores and her penchant for singing with her eyes closed. (Is she dreaming now? Why won’t she look at us? Is this just something Irish that I don’t understand?)

While Dolores continues to warble and let eerie green light wash over her screen, the camera person gets bored and we start seeing snippets of other crap going on. (Did somebody just throw a ukulele across the room? And is that a car muffler?) At one point, we close in on the drummer, and I must say that he looks a little intense and scary, as in “do not let yourself be left alone with this guy”. It’s not clear what his issue might be, but he’s not in a happy place.

Okay, now we’re changing things up a bit. The camera is overhead, and we’re looking down on the various band members as they lean their heads back and do some form of yoga while random images flow along under their feet. It doesn’t look relaxing at all, but everybody must be having a good time or you’d think they would stop.

Cut to Dolores in another location, this one involving a room where there may or may not be walls made of ice. Dolores looks especially sad during this bit, probably because she’s cold, and she just stands there morosely while the camera weaves in and out of the frozen architecture. (During this mess, we get a random shot of Psycho Drummer Boy doing something with a window treatment. I’m going to guess it’s not something pleasant or sane.)

At this point there’s a long sequence of unrelated shots. In technical terms, this is known as “making up crap to fill out the video”.

Now we’re back to Dolores in the room with the green light. She’s actually smiling now, so something quite pleasing must have happened while we were visiting with the Dolores in the other room that’s a giant freezer. She’s still mostly singing with her eyes closed, but there’s some nice color in her cheeks now and she’s swaying a little bit. I’m guessing she had sex. Good for her. (As long as it wasn’t the drummer.)

Once again, this sequence goes on forever, with Dolores crooning amid random shots of the rest of the band looking slightly gothic while fans blow hair around. (And really, would it kill somebody to turn some lights on around here? No wonder everyone is so depressed.)

While satiated Dolores continues singing, we start getting superimposed, ghostly images of the band members in that stance they like with their heads thrown back, exposing their necks. (What gives with that? Are these people waiting around for vampires? If a bloodsucker did show up, he wouldn’t be able to find them in all this moody darkness. If you want to be eaten, you should properly display yourself in a pleasing manner. I’m thinking candles and violins, not darkness and floating frogs.)

And we wind things down with another odd image of Dolores, possibly lying on her back, while more cryptic images swirl and sway around her. It’s very possible that she’s slipped into a coma, because she doesn’t move. At all. Then some fool throws more junk in that water, leading to the final bit with a new Dolores (or somebody) doing what might be an Irish jig and the original Delores having an orgasm back in the green room.

Okay, then. I finally understand the wailing at the end of the song…


Click Here to Watch the Video on YouTube.

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