Live Review: Vitamin 'To Believe' (Official Video)

I’ll open with a confession. I’m biased and overly sentimental about this track but I’ve made every effort to keep hyperbole out of things. Leeds indie-electronic four piece VITAMIN have just released the fantastic good video for their single ‘To Believe’ and it’s the best good. That’s better. Good.

The reason I’m a fan is because the video, although nothing spectacular in terms of cinematography or set design, charts an average few days in the northern English city of Leeds, a city where I had the pleasure of spending three years learning about interesting but admittedly pointless texts from years gone by that have no real bearing on the career ladder or my employability today. Watching the clip for the band’s single though, makes me remember why we all stuck at it for so long. So thank you Vitamin for helping me justify my very present and ever-increasing student debt.

The song itself deals in simplicity rather than complexity – it’s one of those infectious guilty pleasures that creeps into your head without you really realising, so that you find yourself humming snatches of it when you least expect.

For Leeds students the video is an evocative and nostalgic montage comprising many familiar scenes and go-to haunts, but if you’ve never been so lucky as to step foot in God’s own country (aka rainy Yorkshire), you can still enjoy it for a pretty pleasant 3-minute watch. Even if you can’t bring the same contextual memories to the screen, the video still deals with the classic ‘let’s throw a house party for our music video’ vibe, but with a slightly more rounded and authentic edge than usual.

Grim close ups of Hyde Park skate park on a misty dewy morning are intercut with the clubbing antics of the night before, the redbrick ginnels are lined with bins put out for collection (though they’ll never get collected) whilst the leather jacket-clad band drag an early morning fag on their front steps; high end Victoria Arcade markets lead into a day trip out to Ilkley Moor where the fresh open air (the very same that the Bronte sisters supped, don’t you know) offers respite from the neon lit basement rooms and grungy garage beats of the previous evening. Oh and we also get a section which shows every Leeds student’s dream first date – a trip to Tropical World in Roundhay Park.

The band’s dance element is entwined with punchy guitar hooks in a similar way to the things that bands like The 1975, Peace and Everything Everything have been doing well for a while. The ‘uh oh uh oh’ refrain repeats throughout and for me the song kind of surmises the essence of a summer in England – despite the hard-edged exterior and rain-soaked settings, ‘To Believe’ is actually an upbeat melodic vibe that centres around poppy elements designed to give you the feel good factor. Sorry, feel good.

Words by Katie Rowley

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