Depending on your musical proclivities you may either love or loathe MGMT and their pretentious, indie, keyboard stylings. I have seemed to avoid just enough hype in order to enjoy them, having been exposed to them by one of my employers. Either that or I am simply not indie enough. This is always a possibility.
They took their time releasing a video for the ubiquitous single, “Kids”, and the results are interesting. It has been pointed out that the child being accosted by putrescent, otherworldly beings and people with degloved faces seems to be distressed in a way that may not be entirely due to his acting chops. I can say that I do not disagree and that, were I grabbed by taloned monster hands as a neonate, I too may have been agitated. Still, that is a situation best left to child services and, really, it’s none of my business. Stranger, perhaps, is the silver leotards and spaceman/tribal face paint. Neither is as egregious as attributing a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche to Mark Twain. Maybe it’s some sort of inside joke, the origins of which I am not privy to, or perhaps it’s a mistake. Either way it’s unconscionable.
Update: In my rush to find an embeddable version of this I failed to notice that I picked a video that cut off the last minute or so. This is why it pays to watch the video all the way through, kids! This new version shows it in its entirety. The link below, to MGMT’s official YouTube account with non-embeddable version, remains unchanged. Thanks, chiablo.
Chad VanGaalen animates the video for his song, “Molten Light”, a tale of murder and revenge from beyond the grave, set in a strange and hallucinatory world. It’s a beautiful and disturbing video for an equally beautiful and disturbing song.
Justice of the Unicorns exposes the horror behind the world’s gadgetry in their video for “Dragon’s Claw”, animated by Robert Bruce. Watch and bear witness to the terrible crucible in which your mp3 players and cellphones are forged!
Some things I have learned from after having watched this video and read some of the comments on YouTube:
• Okoboji is a town, located between East and West Lake Okoboji in what is known as the Iowa Great Lakes
• The women who are to be found in the aforementioned town are unforgettable. Also, they may or may not be disease-ridden “skanks”.
A tale of love, desire, and loss — set to a slightly tweaked version of the theme from The Twilight Zone — “Okoboji Girl” is on par with the likes of “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”, “Home Sweet Home”, and “Here I Go Again” in the pantheon of great power ballads.
Some Guy Who Has A Public Access Show in the Iowa Great Lakes Region’s video performance is no less impressive, with the kind of forced emoting that is required of such a deep, heart-felt composition. Are his fists clenched in pain? Yes. Does he throw himself up against door jambs in frustration? Again, yes. Does he awkwardly position himself center frame so that we may witness his mind-blowing finger work during an epic guitar solo? Once more, yes!
Yes, “Okoboji Girl” has it all, packed into four, stilted minutes. In the end it must be said that, truly, few have done more for a place that most people have never heard of than SGWHAPASITIGLR.
High-speed filming is a tried and true technique in music video creation, but I don’t seem to get tired of it. I can forgive this video its hipster stink for the content itself: it’s a fetishistic anatomy lesson. Watch this in high res.
The It Girl is allowed no escape from our gaze, not by airbrush or soft filter. She is thrown into sharp relief–every pore, follicle, dimple, jiggle, and yes, every jerk–as we are forced to appreciate her very human girlness. The sweat, crease, and joy of some anonymous nymph.
Nor is she a supermodel, and this is the genius of it. While hipster culture thrives on mundanity (celebrates it, in fact) and has for some years now, this is the very first time I have been able to see how.
Her stupid outfit, bad haircut, and plain face invite the very close inspection to which we are treated. A less earthly girl would be dull under this microscope, and over-unctuous in contrast to the saurian splendor of the bird.
[thanks JWZ]
Having just finished re-watching Hair, I’m on a jones for organic, naturalistic dance numbers that mash up keen choreography with loose, unmediated movement.
This video takes the dim blandness of adolescence in LA to the level of the sublime, giving us a Where the Wild Things Are progression from suburban bedroom to urban desert bacchanal. Nighttime in Los Angeles is intoxicatingly toxic anyway. It is comforting to imagine this band of coltish cultists running wild into the dusk, like cats let out of a screen door.
Presets: If I know You [The Art Department]
Old School Freight Train takes one of Blondie’s most grating songs and turns it into a beautiful, meditative dirge. What it actually has to do with Civil War reenactments and Civil War facial hair is something that only the director knows for sure.
Love, death, and big guns: The Derek Trucks Band version of “Crow Jane”, a traditional performed by any number of bluesmen over the years, perhaps most famously by Skip James.
The mash-up is taken one step further. “I’m New” is part of a project entitled Thru-You, by one Kutiman. He has cut, arranged, and spliced dozens of various videos on YouTube together, creating new audio/visual compositions. Whenever possible he has provided links and credits cementing a feeling of community created album. It’s pretty interesting stuff.
I must confess that I have only heard two songs from Fleet Foxes first full-length album, so any insights I may have may be handicapped. Still, of the two, this is by far my favorite. To me “White Winter Hymnal” seems to encompass my incongruous feelings of these dark, cold months; childhood nostalgia mixed with a sense of gloom. In that way it has provided me with a fitting soundtrack as the calender marches slowly towards the dawn of spring.
The newest single from German pop musician Peter Fox. My enthusiasm for his work has diminished little in the months since I discovered him. This one features more strings, more monkey masks, and animated graffiti.
Update: As with the last post, Benjamin Stürmer provides an excellent translation in the comments for those of us unfamiliar with the German language.
MTV has done much to sully its storied music history but one of the only right moves they have made as of late has been offering their entire catalog of music videos for our viewing pleasure, going all the way back to the channel’s inception and even some from before then. It makes for a dangerous time-sink, if only because it allows the user to search out oddities like the above. Search at your own risk.
Update: Of course, it’s only good if you live in the U.S. For those who live outside MTV’s acceptable domain, here is a YouTube link. Thanks, Ginja.
Karin Dreijer Anderson — the feminine half of the Swedish duo The Knife — recently released this video of a track from the first album of her solo project, Fever Ray. The song itself is simply wonderful, and fits in perfectly among the motley crew of heartbeat basslines and organic melody with which I’m currently obsessed. But it’s when the soothing susurrations and plodding oscillations of the song are combined with the images of a pre-pubescent post-apocalypse that the feeling of some culmination begins to set in.
Granted, the idea of a world in which everyone over the age of innocence is stricken down has appealed to me since I was old enough to understand the implications of a life free from the baggage of antecedent eras. Imagine it, with one fell swoop the slate is wiped clean, and the psychological plagues passed from generation to generation like genetic memory of , aren’t simply abandoned, but forgotten entirely. The concept is, of course, not without its flaws; as evidenced by the mounds of media in which children are left to their own devices, and thus to their own injury. But on the surface it’s a wonderful idea, this ultimate infantile do-over; Karin Dreijer Anderson obviously “gets it”, and provides the perfect soundtrack for your musings to boot.
The only mullets to ever pass muster belonged, respectively, to the Goblin King; Kurt Russell; and the two junkie geniuses pictured above. I’m certain I’ve posted this before, but my midnight irritation compels me.
The story of this video, as related to me by friend Aaron Cole, is that there was a sizable budget allotted to special effects, cinematography, and star power. A sizable budget that was reassigned to a sizable H bender, and the trashbag sea and batman moon pulled out at the last minute. The video is better for it.
In sheer defiance of the World Wide Web Consortium's will, Ectomo was designed using a non-web-standard font. Luckily, it is included in the excellent font pack released by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, which can be freely downloaded in Mac and PC formats here. Ectomo should still look fine without it, though.
