Music Videos

I’m not soooo certain what’s going on in the intro to this video, but the rest of it somehow combines Thanksgiving and make out sessions with creeptastic puppetry ala Muppets-meets-David Cronenberg. This weirdness kind of speaks for itself… (queue epileptic fit).

Directed by Allen Cordell
Taken from Asphalt EP

In their new video for “Every Minute Alone,” Danish electropop trio WhoMadeWho explore real human sadness, through montages of what was always a childhood taboo — men crying. Crying while building IKEA furniture, crying while dropping groceries, crying when burning clothing, crying, crying, everywhere, and everywhere lonely!

This is Nordic black comedy standard, but in music video form! There is nothing better!

The new Young Widow’s album In and Out of Youth’s Lightness is an excellent dark and dreary album. So it is fitting that the video for the new single “Future Hearts” fits that profile. Dark, dreary, a little bit creepy – Buffalo Bill eat your heart out. Literally.

Directed by Jeremy Johnstone
Commissioned by Temporary Residence LTD

Band Members & Cast:
Evan Patterson
Nick Thieneman
Jeremy McMonigle
death: Lindsay Reinstatler

Produced by: Rockadee
Executive Producer: Jeremy DeVine
Camera: Jeremy Johnstone
Editor: Sung Han

I enjoy this video to no end, and it alone puts Low up 20,000 points in my book.

For starters, IT HAS JOHN STAMOS!!!!!!, looking as fine as ever. The video itself is a throw-back to the days of black and white pictures. A romantic scene takes place between a couple as they’re driving in a classic car, a detached background rolling behind them the entire way. All the while, the song beckons listeners to “Try To Sleep” in an eerie way, like a mantra to be found in all the spaces between life and sleep, as well as between sleep and death. And yeah, the video takes it there, too (to death).

Directed by Travis Schneider.

Glasgow, Scotland’s Errors roam through all landscapes — terrestrial, aquatic, otherworldly, rave-y — in this video for “Magna Encarta”, sometimes with a chicken as their prime focus, and sometimes not. All landscapes become intertwined with one another throughout the course of the video, however, with the chicken remaining the only constant.

Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned from this? Is this a literal take on the question of chicken or the egg? (But there are no eggs…)

Ohhhhh, no matter. Errors are soon going on tour with Mogwai, and it’s going to be amaaaaaaaaazzzzzzziiiiing! You need to go. There’s a reason these guys are killin’ it in the UK (and the chicken has only a little to do with it).

In a feat of pure wonder, Brooklyn-based quartet Screens have managed to evade the magnetic lure of musical stagnation with their latest album, Dead House. Without adhering too closely to any one genre tag, they pull bits and pieces of influence from “pop,” “psychedelic,” “noise,” “post-punk,” and “post-rock” when and where they need it, incorporating all of these musical styles expertly without falling victim to the confining qualities of subgenres.

Diverse influences, textures, and techniques number many on Dead House, providing soundscapes which bubble up in every journalist’s head a steady stream of descriptive adjective-and-noun combinations. The album begins gently with “Dead House,” in which a simple piano track becomes slowly swallowed up by by interference. “Saturdays” follows, exploding into raw, heavy beats which conjur images of drum circles. Here, vocalist Breck Brunson’s hard-to-pinpoint vocals are introduced, in the form of a distant falsetto which descends into incomprehensible blathering.

Uncommon visuals come to mind throughout the duration of Dead House. With its aggressive siren-like cycles, “Man Down” provides a soundtrack for one to evacuate a burning warehouse, and piano-heavy “Radio Tabaloapa” may be what a drowning individual hears moments before being sucked into a beckoning underworld. One of the most traditionally accessible tracks, the album single “Pop Logic” contains chiming synth progressions which meld circus parade and funeral march into one bittersweet event.

In a big picture sense, Screens are remarkably distinct — as there are not many bands like them around — but the release is distinct within itself as well. Every track seems like an experiment in Screens doing whatever the fuck they want. Dead House seems uninhibited by tradition, inspired by what it is to create art in the moment. When one listens to the tracks individually, out of context, one can’t help but ask what captive audience Screens can possibly hope to attract with their schizophrenic nature. In context, though, cohesion lies in the album’s non-cohesion — which is truly contradictory, but only when left undefined. Though perhaps thematically linked, the tracks on Dead House are so stylistically different from one another that they are bonded by their dissimilarities.

Screens are not a band made for genre tags. In a way, they transcend them by incorporating so many of them. Dead House has a sophisticated and finely-plotted arc, with atypical songwriting. It is not a shallow album full of singles waiting to be individually hyped, but art rock for those who love organic creation, birthed from a desire to experiment and a penchant for exploration.

Despite its hollow name, Dead House feels like a real, living entity, constantly stirring darkness within itself, while maintaining a facade of lightness. All complexities aside, the prevailing simple sentiment is this: engulf Dead House in its entirety.

“Pop Logic” Music Video

If you didn’t know that twine being pulled in different directions or the slight bowing of cello strings could be beautiful, this video will make you think otherwise. This video is gentle like “Embrace” from Ben Sollee’s upcoming album, Inclusions; it is slow and calming, like a church hymn.

Directed by David Ingram.
Director of Photography, Abdul Al Jamaily, with dance performance by Alessandra Ball.

The influence Robert Pollard’s genius still casts on the Central Ohio music scene is kind of unbelievable. In the seventeen years after Bee Thousand rocketed and the then school teacher rose to international semi-stardom and cult icon status, lo-fi bedroom pop has yet to go out of style in places like Columbus. So, it would seem fitting that when it came back into fashion nationally a few years back, the media actually started paying a bit of attention to a scene they’d ignored for the better part of… well… forever.

Most of this attention has gone to local art school graduates Times New Viking, who apparently spent much of those art school days extensively studying old Guided By Voices material. Let’s count the ways TMV are stylistically aping old GBV. They write tons of succinct pop songs and record them very quickly to four track — just like old Guided By Voices. They make homemade collage art for their album covers sans Photoshop magic, just like Uncle Bob has been doing for years and still continues to. Christ, this album cover even has the same color scheme and generalized feel to the aforementioned Bee Thousand.

See what I mean? It keeps going, though. They’ve released albums on Matador, and now Merge… just like Robert Pollard. The promo video for this album, entitled, “Hello, we’re Times New Viking from Columbus Ohio” is basically a direct homage to the Official Ironmen Rally Song video GBV released back in the mid ’90s. They take a lot of pride in being Ohioans and wear it on their sleeve, just like Robert Pollard. After years of recording lo-fi records, they finally decided to go what Pollard would refer to as “mid-fi” on this new one, just like Guided By Voices eventually did. Also, if that wasn’t enough, they opened for the reunited classic lineup of Guided By Voices on their tour last year, so there’s that.

Listen to “Ever Falling In Love” – DOWNLOAD MP3

Despite all these similarities though, it’s not like Times New Viking sound all that much like GBV; it’s just that you don’t often see that kind of dedicated idol worship in any act. Their pummeling blend of bratty male-female call and response vocals and amplifier worship certainly treads its own path. What’s odd about TNV is that whereas Pollard used lo-fi to put an emphasis on his godhead-brilliant songwriting, they do almost the exact opposite, relying on pile-driving walls of fuzz to seemingly distract the audience from the fact that they write awesome songs. The reason I consider 2008′s Rip It Off kind of a classic isn’t because of its unrestrained use of white noise, but has more to do with the hyper-infectious songcraft.

Recorded in an actual studio, Dancer Equired finds the band turning down their trademark racket and attempting a cleaner sound, but still firmly hiding behind their Central Ohio aestheticisms. It’s good collection of poppy tunes that could do with some more of the variety that made GBV classics like Alien Lanes so compelling. In general, I think TNV’s faster, more pop-oriented major key tracks tend to work better than their more laid-back material, which is why, in my mind, they kind of peaked thusfar with the aforementioned Rip It Off. This just kind of struck me like Times New Viking by numbers, albeit with slightly more focused (not much) production and percentage-wise more mellow minor key jams thrown into the fray.

Or at least so I thought, until I realized that they’d pulled another rabbit from the Robert Pollard bag of tricks, by making an album that fails to truly connect with the audience until at least listen number four. So after half-dismissing this, even writing a more negative review, I suddenly found myself humming half the tunes compulsively, and generally having to concede that I was being fairly short-sighted in my initial assessment. Here they’re doing exactly what I kind of hoped they would, which is putting more emphasis on the songwriting than anything else, which works, although admittedly in a more challenging, less immediate kind of way. Since much of their music is very repetitive, though, you have to kind of hope they continue to push themselves on the follow up to Dancer Equired. My suggestion would be to go full-on hi-fi, add a bass player, and go out of your way to diversify your approach. Maybe someday you’ll write your Isolation Drills. As it is, DE is the perfect album to reign in the spring with-popped out indie bliss — but as mentioned, I think they can push themselves even farther. They have such a great mentor.

Do these concertogers look a little bit like your average Seattlite at an indie rock concert? Bored out of their minds? Glassy-eyed and yawning while pretending to stay focused?

Perhaps…

Apparently, though, according to Colourmusic, the key is to douse a crowd with ketchup, or smatter an onion into their eyeballs, and then everything will turn into a veritable musical orgy! Good thing to keep in mind, touring bands!

To go along with Screaming Females’ community-based concept, DoodleDrag is this DIY animated film for “Wild.” Black-and-white drawings provide the backdrop as a kooky photography-based figure, reminiscent of Bert from Sesame Street joining faces with Homer Simpson, takes center stage.

Artwork and animation by Tiffany Cheng and Michael Topley.