Dive Head First Into Tame Impala’s New Video

POSTED 01.12.15 20:17 BY BECKY WILLOUGHBY

The video for Tame Impala‘s “The Less I Know The Better” is a timeless tale of first love and heartbreak, set to a disco beat and with the kind of lyrics we used to love to emotionally pull out the back of a copy of Smash Hits: aww, the feels.

OK, “JK”, not really: just a lil’ spoiler alert here, because the fact is, the less you do know, the better!

Let’s break it down. As the video opens, we meet the high school cheerleader and the basketball player she’s dating: lots of longing glances across the gym hall – complete with heroic masculine display of athletic prowess – harking back to the opening of “Baby One More Time” Ã la Britney. If memory serves, it was sweet Britney’s “loneliness” that was killing her, turns out, all our cheerleading music video protagonist really wants, is: a boy with some oral skills – and we’re not referring to his startling conversational abilities.

Enter stage right, Trevor the gorilla, who has a (ahem) skills set that basketball boy could only hope to ape. Straight into a sex act that most Directors would stay well away from – the very notion that a young woman knows what turns her on, goes after and gets it, is, gosh, shocking – the vid then takes us head first into a paint dripping psychedelic kaleidoscope; full on Hitchcock references and furry fantasy fuelled fun for the cheerleader, and our Trev. While basketball boy looks on, with a heart full of pain, and an upturned table of sexual inadequacy to conquer.