If like me you’re a huge fan of music videos, you’re probably already more than aware of the excellent job director Vincent Haycock has been doing with his visual accompaniments to tracks from Florence and the Machine’s latest album ‘How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful’. With each video feeling like a self-contained narrative, but also giving the impression they all somehow link together, the team behind the promos have finally revealed there is a connection between the individual pieces by releasing them as one combined 47-minute short film titled The Odyssey.

Recently, the likes of U2 have already taken to employing the narrative power of short film with their extended videos for Song for Someone (again directed by Vincent Haycock) and Every Breaking Wave (directed by Aoife McArdle), but what exactly is it in these narrative promos that appeals to those in the music industry? Is it just another promotional tool in the arsenal of an artist’s marketing team, looking for inventive new ways to promote material? Or is it a way for musicians to explore a more narrative-based approach to accompany the storytelling within their songs?

Inspired by Dante’s Inferno and Homer’s Odyssey, with The Odyssey it not only feels like Haycock and his high-profile musical collaborator have discovered a way to experiment with the limitations of the music video, but also found a truly immersive way to encourage an audience to emotionally connect with the work of an artist. Though the storyline for the piece can at best be described as wandering, it’s such a personal narrative (you can read more about Florence and Vincent’s story inspiration in this article on Pitchfork) that really takes its viewers on a journey and makes you care about its characters and upon its conclusion you really do feel like you know its star a little better.