Though its cosmetics suggest a bohemianism I would have never picked up on if I had listened to the single exclusively, there’s something very punkish about The Orange Apples.’ “Naked Love” music video that I was immediately taken with in my initial sit down with the release this week. Cut this past August to a warm critical reception and picking up momentum this fall, this latest cut from The Orange Apples. is one of tremendous emotional weight, and yet it could be one of the leanest indie pop ballads I’ve listened to in the better part of the last year. 

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The music video for “Naked Love” is deeply stirring touching on themes within the song that extend well beyond what the words could ever impart to us on their own, and were it adorned with anything other than the human attributes (literal and poetic) it was, I don’t know if it would feel as profound as it does in this instance. The plastic-wrapped individuals who we find stripped clean of any impurities, or even clothing with which to conceal something from the audience, are representative of the narrative on multiple lessons, and their synchronized movements give the melody so much more tension than I would have expected to find here. 

Although abrasively abstract in a couple of key moments, the music video for The Orange Apples.’ “Naked Love” and the song itself make for some of the most compelling and provocative art I’ve come across as a music critic in 2020, and if you haven’t already, you need to see what I mean for yourself as soon as possible. There’s nothing holding this artist back from assembling something really over the top and conceptual in this release, and thankfully, she’s using every resource of natural origin at her disposal in doing exactly that. 

Zachary Rush