"Marshal Dear" - Savages [YouTube Official Video]

London's Savages have just released the Kurt Vonnegut-inspired video for "Marshal Dear," a track from this year's Mercury Prize nominated Silence Yourself.

Conceptualized by guitarist Gemma Thompson, the video is a visualization of Slaughterhouse-Five protagonist Billy Pilgrim's experience when he became unstuck in time. In the book, Billy watches a film of American WWII bombers, but he sees everything in reverse: Taking off backwards from an airfield, flying back over a German warzone and sucking all the fire and bombs up away with them, before landing safely at their base and shipping the bombs back to the states to be dismantled. The scene is one of the most notable and poignant descriptions of war in American literature and the video shows a hauntingly excellent rendition of it.

On the Matador Records blog, Gemma Thompson had this to say:

“This scene would replay in my head and I could imagine it as an animation of lines flowing into each other, much like early hand-drawn animation created to accentuate a musical score. I also thought it was beautiful how Billy tries to right the process of destruction and how this echoed the true story of the character in the song Marshal Dear – Field Marshal Rommel’s attempted assassination of Hitler to end the Second World War which resulted in him being forced to take his own life to spare those of his family. We worked on bringing the character of the factory worker into the fore so that the animation now focused on the role of the woman working in the factory and the bomb itself as she realises her hand in the destruction.”

Watch the video above and purchase Silence Yourself through the band's official website. You can also read our review of Savages' recent NYC concert right here at Zumic.

YouTube description and lyrics:

Designed and animated by Gergely Wootsch - www.gergely-wootsch.com
Additional animation - Rosanna Wan
Produced by Beakus - www.beakus.com

Savages:
https://twitter.com/Savagesband
http://www.popnoire.com
http://www.savagesband.com
http://www.matadorrecords.com
http://www.facebook.com/savagestheband

Purchase "Silence Yourself" from Amazon:http://smarturl.it/savagesa
Purchase "Silence Yourself" from Matador: http://bit.ly/ZVo1GA

Lyrics:
I HOPE YOU'RE BREATHING YOUR LAST BREATH
OH MARSHAL DEAR
AND YOU WILL DIE, YOU WILL DIE SOON
I GIVE YOU A QUARTER OF AN HOUR
OH MARSHALL DEAR
CAN'T YOU SEE I'M WINNING

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW
SILENCE YOURSELF
SILENCE YOURSELF
SILENCE YOURSELF
SILENCE YOURSLEF

THERE ARE SUICIDES IN EVERY DREAMS
OH MARSHAL DEAR
EVEN MORE WHEN THE ARMY'S ON ITS KNEES
CROWDS GROW CRAZY AND FIRE
OF MARSHALL DEAR
CAN'T YOU SEE WE'RE LOOSING

CAN YOU SEE THEM NOW
SILENCE YOURSELF
SILENCE YOURSELF

Source: Savages YouTube Channel