It’s not often that a music video perfectly encapsulates the song that it accompanies, but Focus Creeps’ video for Smith Westerns’ ‘Weekend’ does just that and then some.
Taking the lyric, “Weekends are never fun unless you’re around here too” as a starting point, Focus Creeps (aka Aaron Brown and Ben Chappell) have interlaced three narrative strands through the video that each reflect the appetites and frustrations of American teenage experience.
In storyline number 1, the band stay at home and smoke in a room lit with primary colours, surrounded by snack food wrappers. Even though the band smoke branded cigarettes, the suggestion of a hallucinogenic experience is created when a whirring ceiling fan is shot from below, and the red and blue lights in the room appear to pulse. The close-up headshots of the band that follow are rendered in slow-motion, suggesting that the viewer is undergoing a trippy experience and is only partially-aware of real time and the surroundings.
When band member Cameron Omori looks directly into the camera with a quizzical expression he appears more concerned about the well-being of the implied fourth friend, the viewer, rather than experiencing any high himself.