What happens when you enter the dreams of a teenage boy who fell asleep while watching a commercial for a phone sex hotline? Well, more often than not, after a little obligatory PG-13 rated boyhood fantasy imagery ripped straight out of Weird Science, what’s left is a lot of anxiety about a lack of athleticism and fears of emasculation. No one said the mind of a teenage boy was pretty.
This video for “Dream Girl” is extremely well-suited for this song; the synths have a sensual, fantasy-like quality to them while the frenetic handclaps have a chopped-up, slightly off-beat rhythm that definitely makes one feel anxious. The whole package put all together is absolutely memorable and I’m really loving this video right now.
Hourglass Sea is giving away for free their entire album ‘Live from the Crematorium’ right now on their Soundcloud page.
The opening song on Nite Jewel’s ‘One Second Of Love’ LP, “This Story”, is a slow-burning intimate torch-song that seems tailor-made for lonely karaoke parlors; not coincidentally this video looks like it was shot in an empty bar at the rundown Marriott outside the airport. The cinematography has a retro 80’s VHS filtered look to it that gives this video a surreal otherworldly quality that’s oddly mesmerizing.
Haim turn gender stereotypes on their head in their new video for “The Wire”, which features the band breaking up with their boyfriends. Flipping things around, it’s the boys, not the girls who go home and cry and pine for their lost loves in tear smeared journals. One of those boys that they break up with is none other than The Lonely Island’s Jorma Taccone and what I’m wondering is why didn’t they get Akiva Schaffer and Andy Samberg from The Lonely Island to cameo as the two other dudes? Because as we all know, Andy has the best cry face out there. Seems like a real missed opportunity if you ask me.
Earlier this week another Haim video appeared on the net, this time for their live Like A Version cover of Sheryl Crow’s “Strong Enough” on Triple J radio. I’ve got to admit, I wasn’t entirely psyched when I heard it was a Sheryl Crow cover, but the instant those repeated synth chords appeared I was sold.
“The Wire” is taken from ‘Days Are Gone’, which is coming out September 30th.
A little while ago I posted the lyric video for Summer Camp’s amazing new song “Fresh”, easily one of the best songs of the year. Today Summer Camp released the official version of the video for everyone to enjoy. This video looks real pretty with its eye-catching explosions of color and Elizabeth Sankey’s gorgeous mug brightening things up, but unfortunately I think we’ve all seen the filmed backwards video thing done way better elsewhere. Plus, I thought that lyric video was much more clever and it embodied the spirit of this fantastic song a whole lot better than this does. But even with all that said, this is still a decent video to an incredible song and it’s well worth watching if just to listen to this fantastic song again and again.
So I’m going through some new videos on my computer, trying to distract myself from the unbearably stifling heat in my apartment by finding some new material for the blog, when I stumble across this rather unassuming music video for Minks’ “Margot”. The visuals didn’t really grab me at first so I jumped to another tab in my browser, but I kept the song playing in the background as I looked at other things. And wow, it didn’t take long before I stopped what I was doing and went back to this video.
August is the perfect time for breezy New Wave pop songs like this. This is the kind of song you crank on your stereo as you drive around aimlessly with all your windows all the way down. It feels optimistic yet nostalgic; energetic and yet lazy and lackadaisical. It reminds me a lot of all the Swedish pop music I love, which also reminds me, I’d really love to visit Sweden in the summertime sometime.
After I had watched the “Margot” video a few more times I looked up and noticed that the tab right next to the one I was on also started with “Minks…” and I thought I had mistakenly opened up the same video twice. Upon clicking on that tab I received the most wonderful gift though, in that right next door was a fan video for another Minks song, “Playboys Of The Western World”, crafted by none other but my favorite music video editor, David Dean Burkhart. By pure coincidence this video happened to end up right next to the other one in my cluttered browser, and it surely was one of the most pleasant accidents that I’ve had in a long while. Songs like these just fill me with happiness and pleasant feelings. In a matter of minutes Minks had gone from a band I’d never heard of before to something I was massively excited about.
I just wanted to take a minute before I went to bed to point out that Braider (or B R A I D E R, as their Bandcamp page would now have it) have released their first EP ‘NITETECH’ today and it’s fantastic. If that name sounds vaguely familiar to you right now it might be because I featured their song “Milk” on my ‘Can You Take The Heat???” mixtape and then shortly afterwards put “Dust” on the ‘Runner-Ups’ mixtape. Braider are a little band from Baltimore that I recently discovered and I just can’t get enough of them, as evidence by the fact that right now on Last.FM they have 321 Scrobbles (or plays) and 44 of which are from me alone. If you listened to the mixtapes then you already know that this stuff is good, but if you need a little more convincing check out the title track below and then go to their Bandcamp page to download it. It’s pay what you want, so there is really no excuse not to download it.
16-year-old New Zealand native Lorde has a surprise hit this summer with “Royals”, a song that’s taken everyone aback by how quickly it’s jumped from hipster blogs to mainstream radio. “Royals” is a good song, but it’s her second single, “Tennis Court,” that’s really grabbed my attention. A lot of that has to do with this fantastic video, which is an expert study in dramatic minimalism. As an interesting change of pace the camera holds still on Lorde’s face without cutting away, but the only word of the song she bothers to sing is the otherworldly deep “Yeah” that punctuates the chorus. Despite the fact that not much actually happens here, her expressions, the make-up and the lighting all combine perfectly to make her performance quite mesmerizing.
Basement Jaxx are back with an all new single “What A Difference Your Love Makes” that sounds exactly like everything else they’ve ever put out…although that’s not necessarily a bad thing at all. This video, filmed in Johannesburg, South Africa, features two boys doing a dance called Pantsula, a dancing style that “became popular in the 80s and is still practiced by the young, fashionable & rebellious in the townships.” It’s a great showcase for the Basement Jaxx’s multicultural sound, a sound that embodies so many different cultural styles and yet remains uniquely that of Basement Jaxx. They’re one of my most favorite bands of all-time, and it’s for reasons like this song that I love them so.
Elli Ingram is Britain’s latest contribution to the 90’s R&B revival that’s been so popular lately. She sounds a bit like an amalgamation of Jessie Ware and Adele, a divine combination of sensual soul and big bombastic vocal chords. The video for “Mad Love” was filmed in the style of early 90’s hip-hop/R&B videos, and it plays with the idea of what a British pensioner’s conception of the thug life might be. Guns, weed, doilies and tea time. What else could you need?
You can download her debut EP ‘Sober’ for free by signing up for her mailing list or liking her on Facebook. She’s still relatively unknown so you better get on this soul train before it leaves the station.
You’ll eventually get to a point in your life when you think you’ve seen water move just about every which way a human being could ever see water move, at which point you’ll probably give up on living because after you’ve seen it all, what else could there really be out there for you? But then you watch a video like this, featuring some truly astounding shots of waves crashing in slow-motion and you’ll be like, “Well, fuck, I guess I haven’t seen it all. You win this round, universe.”
Blow this video up full-screen and turn the sound up because you’re in for a pretty good show. Goldroom’s “Pacific” creates the most sublimely relaxing spaced-out tropical vibe to perfectly compliment your experience. If you don’t point at the screen, mouth ajar, and mumble to yourself, “I want to go to there…” then this song hasn’t done its job properly.
You can pick up an mp3 of Goldroom’s “Pacific” for free as part of Scion A/V’s Sharkwaves Volume 2 EP compilation, newly out just in time for Shark Week.
C'est Non Un Blog 