Polyvinyl continue to expand the world of Where This Ends with This Silent View, the third instalment in the band’s five-part musical short film, conceived as a lost 1990s TV programme. Directed by bassist John Lewis, the video leans into the isolation running through a song framed as a message sent into the void. Quite frankly, the band have nailed it.
The track opens with a clean, slightly overdriven electric guitar tracing an almost hypnotic pattern. Rather than taking over, it creates a suspended, shadowy space with a touch of ’90s jangle. From there, the arrangement gradually gathers weight, as the guitars grow louder and wider through layers of distortion and feedback, at times recalling The Joy Formidable.
The production piles on the layers without turning everything into mush. Each part remains clear, while the drums keep a firm grip on the track as it swells towards a huge, emotional and near-cinematic climax, with more than a hint of Wolf Alice in its DNA.
Annabelle is brilliant here. Her voice carries a real ache without laying the drama on too thick, shifting from calm reflection to full-throated intensity in the space of a line. You can hear the influence of The Cranberries in that approach, with Annabelle showing, much like Dolores O’Riordan, how an intimate song can gather strength without losing its vulnerability.
Lyrically, This Silent View explores loneliness, insignificance and the need for connection through a cosmic lens. Its narrator longs to find someone while simultaneously protecting herself from being found. That tension suits the song perfectly, especially as the music grows around a voice that still feels tiny against the scale of everything surrounding it.
By the end, This Silent View is still floating somewhere out in the darkness, waiting for an answer. Whether anyone replies hardly matters: for four minutes, Polyvinyl make the void feel a little less empty.
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