Youth Without Youth

Is this an Irish Spring commercial? When I first heard “Hitten”, I assumed that the singer was someone older for a variety of reasons. For one, it’s relatively stripped of symbolic artifice, something that seems odd for people so young.  It’s very straightforwardly about love, life, indecision, not even packed under the camoflauge of a narrative. I remember college writing workshops where writing something that required deciphering was far more important than writing something meaningful. “Hitten” sounds middle-aged and angsty especially in its complicated understandings that sometimes independence, self-control and freedom come with their own soul crushing unintended consequences. Maybe it just sounds middle aged because I relate to it, which could make this just another day in criticism as persuading other people that your projections are their projections. I am, you are, he is,  we are Sasha Frere Jones as they say.

But the video is practically the essence of youthful nevercare flair, albeit in a far more refreshing non-American context. Can anyone imagine their U.S. equivalent-in-age sporting such a lack of “style”. There is no sexualized persona, no tween tigress angel-whore dichotomy, just some young women in loose, fitting comfortable clothes and little make up jumping around in front of the camera. Of course this au natural nudity is itself something can be meticulously postured, but shot-for-shot, it seems like a fairly unstaged celebration of a certain kind of innocent play, too young for cynicism, too old not to be partially tongue-in-cheek “playing” the kid with hopscotch, jump ropes and silly dancing. This is almost wholesome, like an indie-cred ready Hannah Montana before Annie Liebowitz turned her into Southern Gothic object of incest and ephebophilia.  It certainly cracks a can of sunchine through my initial impression of the song, rendering its desolation obsolete in giddy brightness.