It’’s a pretty rare occurrence to come across a music video that has both a strong narrative and strong visuals. Often you’’ll get one or the other, but when you find one with equal measures of both, you know you’’ve witnessed something special. Oliver Goodrum’’s hard-hitting video for Casually Sunshine’s, Consequences of the Kill is definitely a video ticking all the boxes, with a gripping story and some striking cinematography.

Consequences of the Kill is a tale of a suburban community battling for survival on a daily basis, as we witness isolation, infidelity and hostility from the neighborhood’’s young and old. There are glimmers of hope in the harsh surroundings, but mainly there is a cloud of despair and inevitability hanging over this nameless district and there appears to be little escape from its grasp.

The poignant folk track from Casually Sunshine juxtaposes the gritty visuals of this story perfectly and is the reason Goodrum’’s video is so effective. You wouldn’’t usually expect to find inner-city imagery set to this kind of track and if you watch Consequences of the Kill with the audio off, you would expect this to be a rap or hip-hop video. And this is where Goodrum has pulled off somewhat of masterstroke by doing the unexpected (a simple trick really) and focusing instead on the emotion in the music to compliment the power of the story. The song and story may not be a combination we’’ve come to expect, but listen closer to the music and its lyrics and you’’ll find an ideal match.

The music video is a wonderful thing and often a great place to showcase talent for visual flair, post-production prowess, and effects wizardry. At times though, it can become somewhat tiring watching the vacuous ‘bling’ of some music promos and you can hunger for a video with a bit of bite and power. Well thanks to Oliver Goodrum we finally have that. It’’s not funny, it’’s not gimmicky, and it’’s certainly not glamorous. Consequences of the Kill has taken the music video back to the street with solid story-telling and the power of the narrative.