As you may have seen, a lot was published about how bleak Shocking Pinks’ Guilt Mirrors is, and how sprawling and unwieldy it is—how it is an edifice built from broken bones, broken spirits, and the aftermath of earthquakes.
Nick Harte, however, is also a true romantic, and his new video for “A Million Times”—the track which opens the final volume of the Guilt Mirrors trilogy—is evidence that Harte has neither lost hope of better things to come, nor the will and desire to express this hope in music.
Shocking Pinks wouldn’t be Shocking Pinks, though, if happiness didn’t also have to fight off Harte’s inner demons. Like the song itself, the video to “A Million Times” never allows the viewer to buy in fully to the unfolding scenes of a fairytale Russian wedding.
Condensing hours of creative commons footage from ostentatious, high-society Russian weddings, the music video focuses on one central wedding, contrasting moments of true tenderness and joy between the newlyweds with the superficial (and yes, somewhat “Euro-trashy”) moments of decadence, show commercialism, and bad taste. A mother-in-law lets slip a cynical smirk, cheap disco lights twinkle on tiled floor, and yet we root for what’s true. Noisey has the first look.