For this Director VS Band, we’ve gone BIG. After spotting the freak-ay music video for Yeasayer’s ‘Madder Red’ we chased down first its eccentric director Andreas Nilsson on why he enlisted the fearless Hollywood actress Kristen Bell smooching her pet, an oozing creature resembling a discarded tumor. Yeasayer’s Anand Wilder had his say too, he cheered at the blob’s bit part vocals, his thievery from Celtic verse poetry and why ‘Madder Red’ is about wuve, true wuve.

DIRECTOR: Andreas Neilsson

SS: What stood out most in the song when creating the storyboard? Did you have any input from the band?
Andreas Neilsson: Sure, we discussed the ideas over the phone a couple of times. As every band that knows how to do good art, they give the people they collaborate with some room in the creative process. I had a lot of freedom here. I wanted to do a video that was going in a different direction then previous stuff, a video that had a more conservative facade. We haven’t spoken after it was finished and released; hope the guys are happy with it. I guess I’ll read the naked truth in this article here.

SS: Can you explain a little bit about the story behind the video?
Andreas: The story comes from a personal experience that involves the death of a pet, or the loss of a deformed sheep to be honest. I lived in the Outer Hebrides some years ago and had a friend that was a shepherd. One day he delivered a deformed sheep. It looked like a piece of flesh-bread, with just one arm, one eye and a small little mouth. We called him Bommel. It had to be put to eternal sleep. It was a sad day in Lochmaddy. The trauma had to come out through this video. 

I don’t think I need to expand what you already see on the screen, it’s a story about struggles in life. [I] wanted to tell it in a pretty straight manner, embrace a sentimental ‘Beverly Hills 90210’/’Old Yeller aesthetic’.

SS: 
Can you explain about Kristen Bell's involvement, her input and more to the point, how did you get her to kiss your oozing blob creature?
Andreas: Kristen Bell is a great actor that I knew would be able to play this straight and add realism. Also she brought the American sweetheart personality to the character I was looking for. And the fact that she is a dedicated animal rights activist and a PETA spokesperson made it an obvious choice. She seemed like a cool girl that would be up for doing a disturbing little film like this, and luckily she was. Kissing Bommel wasn’t a big deal, she is a pro goddammit!

BAND: YEASAYER’s ANAND WILDER

SS: What's the tale or concept being told in the song ‘Madder Red’?
Anand Wilder (guitarist): It’s like a confessional love song about being away from the lover, an honest depiction of what it’s like to be on the road and away from them.

SS: Have you any interesting trivia about in the making of the song?
Anand: Well it started more as a fantasy. Sometimes I use other people’s poetry to get started so it was a line from a Celtic book of verse. It was the opening line and I just kind of went from there. As I had to write more lyrics to fill out the song and I kinda made it more personal.

SS: Why did you decide to go with Andreas Nilsson for the video?
Anand: He was at the top of the list of directors our record label, suggested to us and it was one that popped out immediate and I said “Oh wow, he’s interested in doing the video, that’s amazing.” I was familiar with his work, looking at some of videos he’s done for The Knife and Fever Ray and Peter Bjorn and John and MGMT. We’re really enamoured with his visual style and his Swedish sense of humour, (or maybe just his personal sense of humour) and thought it would be a good next step for the Yeasayer video side of things. We’d had a lot of luck with the past few videos (with working with Radical Friend - http://www.radicalfriend.com/) and it was time to go with a new direction. And I think it worked really well!

SS: So, what did you think about the harmonized singing when we first see the singing blob in the video, is it meant to represent anyone’s voice in the band?
Anand: That’s the beauty of that blob; it can replicate many voices in that choir, and its part of its charm.

Words: Gemma Dempster