Lost in the Plot

Though the Montreal band the Dears have a new and well-regarded album called Gang of Losers, I love the band for a single song from their last album. Whatever it truly is about, "Lost in the Plot," twinned with the following video, continues last week's theme of secondary school alienation, in this case of a young Black child in a northern white world.

Reasons why I love the video and song:

• The combination of still and video photography;
• The kid;
• His valiant effort to dance to Motown-inflected indie rock;
• The "Our love/don't mess with our love/our love is so much stronger" refrain;
  
• Lead singer Murray Lightbourne's bright yellow maracas, which he throws to the ground at the moment when the song accelerates to its end;
  
• The quick sequence of still photographs at the end of the video as Lightbourne wails "I promise not to cry any more";
• The child's sad eyes;
  
• Ending with a photograph of him on a snow-laden landscape.

I can't speak with any knowledge about the videography, such as the bright glare used to obscure the band through most of the video, though those techniques seem to make it visually textured and interesting. Regardless, it is the picture of the lonely child on a snowscape that hits me hardest.