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Brief
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy tends to lay down some fairly haunted mid-west Americana at the best of times. But 'Horses,' from his 2004 album Bonnie 'Prince' Billy Sings Greatest Palace Music, itself a self-referential career-reinterpreting kind of deal, finds him in an upbeat mode of travelling country twang.
Braden King's video for the song follows a simple truck driver, often placing the viewer in the passenger's perspective, as he crosses by overpasses and highways in his semi trailer down American highways. There's some pretty classical Road Movie-isms happening here: as we hear the lines, 'I'd be riding horses if they left me', the image of the truckie driving his salt-of-the-earth behemoth through wintry American woods feels like they really mean it: more iconic than ironic. Smiling through a down-home handlebar moustache and decked out in Harley Davidson-wear, the truckie is placed in the symbolic position of tour guide for the viewer.
It's a lonely, yet somehow contented picture of a man spending his existence across highways and truck stops. Surreally, he even gets to take a timber wolf along for the ride. Marry that with the allusions to Native American culture dotting the music video, and the stark performance pieces, projected on screens in midnight truck stops, and you've got the ingredients for a beguiling Midwest mystic journey in place.
Director Braden King heads Truckstop Media, a multi-media production company based in New York City, and has an indie-rock pedigree cemented by directing music videos/live visuals for Tortoise, Dirty Three, Low, Sparklehorse and Giant Sand, as well as short-subject docos for Stephen Malkmus and Yo La Tengo. 'Horses' has previously screened at the LA Film Festival, Rural Route Festival and the Billyburg Film Festival in Brooklyn.
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