In the video for her new single “No Feeling,” Julia Bardo pours coffee on her computer’s keyboard. With someone like myself, that might conjure instant panic—but Bardo stares blankly into the camera. Over nimble guitar strums, she sings, “And I picture my life / But there’s no meaning.” Whether it’s an action of defiance, deviance, or some sort of reaction to a technology-obsessed society remains unclear—she’s undisturbed. It’s the same numbness that later underlines scenes of Bardo smashing a cake that has the words “No feeling” iced onto it, and biting into a lemon as if it were an apple. There’s no anticipated reaction; her face doesn’t reveal joy or anger or an uncomfortably puckered mouth. No feeling.
And to her credit, the panic or discomfort Bardo has induced (for me) with the disruption of mundane actions (a laptop’s demise) reveals the conditioned responses society has instilled in us to care about a lot of bullshit that doesn’t really matter. “‘No Feeling’ is about doing things just because you exist, not because you want to actually do them,” she explains. “Because we’re trapped in a cycle of rules in society: you must have a job, go out, drink, talk to people, be sociable, believe in something, and do what other people do in order to survive in the world. Sometimes even the most mundane tasks seem too much to handle.”
“No Feeling” is the second single from the Manchester-based musician’s forthcoming debut album Bauhaus, L’Appartamento, which is out September 10 via Wichita Recordings. Watch the video for “No Feeling” below.
