Kate NV shares surreal “Ça Commence Par” video

Kate NV’s third solo studio LP, Room for the Moon, dropped in June 2020 and was — in this writer’s opinion — one of the best albums to arrive during the first year of COVID lockdown. She could have easily let the album stand alone is a dazzling art-pop achievement, but instead, she’s kept its track list alive by releasing a series of endearingly bizarre music videos, as well as putting out an instrumental version of the record this past September. Jennifer Juniper Stratford’s treatment for “Ça Commence Par” marks the sixth song from Room for the Moon to be set to film, leaving only four tracks on the project unvisualized.

On “Ça Commence Par,” as on many of the tracks on the album, NV pairs simple yet semi-nonsensical lyrics (penned in French by Dmitriy Karelin here, elsewhere by NV in her native Russian, in Japanese, and in English) with an irresistible disco/new-wave bass groove from Jenya Gorbunov and various electronic accoutrements that immerse the listener in NV’s wholly unique world of sound. Above this instrumental, she poses a classic riddle: “On l’achète pour manger / Remarque toi / Personne ne le mange jamais / Ça commence par un ‘a’” (roughly, “We buy it to eat / [But] no one ever eats it / It starts with an ‘a’”).

SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT

Near the end of the track, she reveals the answer, which is obvious in hindsight aside from an unnecessary size specification: “C’est une petite assiette” (“It’s a small plate”). Stratford’s video, like NV’s song, revels in its mischeviousness. NV dances in a red dress and swim cap in front of a green-screen backdrop of constantly self-replicating red balloons. These balloons — and the strands of hair plastered to NV’s forehead in the shape of the devil’s number, draw the viewer’s attention from the tiny platform on which she stands: a crude animatronic render of a small white plate.

Watch the video above, check out NV’s improvised benefit compilation for Ukrainian refugees, and view her recommended super list of Ukrainian charities, donation-based NGOs, and private initiatives here.