Posted by Andrew Unterberger on 03/05/2012 at 5:37 PM News

The Popdust Files: grimes, new videos, oblivion

It was sort of hard to get a read on Grimes just from listening to Visions—the album’s fun and catchy, but it also sounds so distant and at times abstract that it was hard to envision what kind of human beings were actually behind the making of it. With the music video for “Oblivion,” though, suddenly everything makes a lot more sense. Once you get to see all the Claire Boucher, 23-year-old Montreal native and one-time McGill student, that the video has to offer, it really puts a face and personality to the music, making it feel lither, bubblier and much less spacey and left-field.

The “Oblivion” video introduces us to Boucher rocking out to her own music (while donning a variety of hairstyles) at a number of unlikely public places, mostly athletic institutions like motocross tracks, football stadiums and even male locker rooms. In fact, Boucher probably hangs with about 20% of the entire shirtless male population of Montreal in this video—heretofore a grossly under-represented demographic in music videos. Good for you, Claire. (NSFW warning: There is brief ass in this video. Don’t try to predict where, you’ll not see it coming.)