Live Review: Jack Garratt 'Chemical' (Official Video)

JACK GARRATT’s last single, ‘The Love You’re Given’, was an ode to his forerunners from half a decade ago, the sultry smooth electronic R'n'B craftsmen James Blake and Jamie Woon. Follow up track ‘Chemical’ remains very much within these parameters – parameters that Garratt is confidently and intricately reinforcing, skilfully melding emotion to electronics.

This ties into the idea that we think of love as an emotion when it can in fact be distilled down to a series of chemical reactions in the brain, which is a good starting point for thinking about the tantalising new video. We are watching a teenage girl’s obsession, not exactly love, but a chemically driven lust. We feel like voyeurs as we witness her intense imagination play out in her bedroom – at times it is an uncomfortable video to watch.

The chorus crashes into a gyrating, cavorting mesh of laser-like synths, which are matched by the girl’s eruption into frenzied dance moves. It’s actually one of those tracks that feels like the song was an after-effect bred from a visual idea for a video. The girl’s bedroom lamp substitutes for the denim-clad hunk of her fixation, and she dances and kisses him in her imagination in a fit of deluded passion or rage – it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference. The chorus is a repeated warning, "don’t try to reason with my love", and there’s an unhinged look in her eyes that gives way to an uncontained sexual energy that has been awoken. The girl’s love is indeed chemical – enraptured, all-encompassing and intently focused.

It’s the little sparks and additions in terms of production that will give this track longevity – the total and unexpected change of tempo and mood from slithery verse to jerky chorus, the doubled up and layered alto voice juxtaposed with the eerily theatrical ‘ooh’ ‘ooh’ tenors that underpin the whole thing. ‘Chemical’ is taken from Garratt’s EP, The Synesthesiac, which is out now via Island Records.

Words by Katie Rowley

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SEE ALSO:

JACK GARRATT 'THE LOVE YOU'RE GIVEN'

JOSEF SALVAT 'HUSTLER' (OFFICIAL VIDEO)