Jamie T Releases Yet Another Incredibly Strange Music Video

Jamie T, British alt-icon and particular favourite of triple j, has released the second single from his upcoming fourth album ‘Trick’. Power Over Men is a playful cut, a brilliant track to be sure, but even more so when paired with the truly exquisite video clip that must be seen to be believed.

Where do we start? Sonically, we suppose, but fingers are already twitching in anticipation of going through this video frame-by-frame. Power Over Men doesn’t deviate too much from the tested Jamie T formula of Britpop-influenced guitars and choral harmonies. We can definitely hear shades of Arctic Monkeys ‘AM’, especially in the chorus and funk-infused bassline, although Jamie T’s voice has much more character and range than Alex Turner’s.

Power Over Men can probably be seen as the spiritual response to Tame Impala’s ‘Cause I’m A Man. Where Kevin Parker’s song was full of self-loathing at the ineluctable, shameless nature of men, Jamie T’s is full of shameless wonderment and worship of the femme fatale, typically shunned or degraded from a male artistic perspective. This is really smart stuff from Jamie T.

Now, the small matter of this video.

Suburban house, very middle-class Britain. A lady, her bedroom adorned with Christian paraphernalia, wakes up. She’s pretty, probably just entering the middle of middle-age, evidenced by the fain crow-eyes and large underwear we see when she’s getting changed. She could be a schoolteacher getting ready to teach her eighth year brats, or perhaps a mid-level public servant.

She leaves the house, and we get the first glimpse that all is not as it seems with this sweet darling: left at the door is a tie, shoes and briefcase, belonging presumably to some unseen gentleman. She goes to the corner store, purchasing this and that, a bottle of oil, a packet of biscuits, and gets a blow-dry and shampoo from a very talkative hairdresser.

Cut to a pair of legs in thigh-high leather boots. Uh-oh. We find out the whereabouts of the owner of the briefcase and tie. There he is, bathed in red light. With an enormous gag in his mouth. Tied up. And there she is, flogging him with a cat o’ nine tails. Wearing a strap-on the size of a tennis player’s forearm.

I’ll leave it there. ‘Trick’ is due September 2, and what a mischievous album it will be indeed.