One can’t help but love the simplistic and austere beauty of blending a song’s melody, nature’s light, and some majestic images, as Amsterdam’s very own VanWyck truly inspires with a second recent single and accompanying video release. Taken from the new album ‘The Epic Tale of the Stranded Man’ due out April 8th on Excelsior Recordings, ‘Maybe, Maybe Not’ captures the listener’s inner soul with introspective lyrics that are sung as honestly as the rare morning sunlight over the sands of Zandvoort. There is good use of the stream-of-consciousness technique here, alluding to the eternal concept of time. Visual candy gives us the changing seasons, the minimalist beachfront at extreme low tide, the historic splendour with contrasting grit in the streets of Amsterdam, the motion of its trams, the highway, a rural country road, and into the grassy hills, where the payoff awaits to delight in its mystery. Our guide for the journey, with guitar case in-hand throughout, is vocalist Christine Oele. Her perceived determination herein has created a compelling visual hook that aptly supports the narrative of this well-produced and well-penned folk song. This is indeed a music video that begs you to watch it more than once. The imagery may at first seem a bit too-literal, but it just works. Additionally, whether intended or not, there is definitely an inference of feeling stranded, which is quite smart, given the album’s title.
The video is credited to Peter Balm, who also appears to live and work within the creative Amsterdam community. In fact, he states that this was the second time he was asked to make a video for a VanWyck song. The footage is crisp, dramatic at times, and offers some talented use of the black and white film technique, which then transitions to colour by the time of the song’s eventual catharsis. Balm sees light well, and we get to enjoy his magic.
Perhaps the success within this video is that we are sometimes going somewhere we don’t really want to go, maybe on foot, in the rain, we just lost our job and the rent is due. But, we will go there anyway.
To VanWyck: Please do not leave it all behind. You have our attention.
