There is just something about Grimes’ music that lends itself extremely well to these found footage fan videos. I’ve posted videos made from Goddard and Polanski films before and the footage for this video is from the 1968 film ‘La Prisonniére’, by Henri-George Clouzot. It’s extremely well edited and the song–like everything else from Grimes–is killer.
Plan B–otherwise known as the UK Eminem because of his flow, graphic storytelling, and well, because he’s white–came out with an outstanding debut album in 2006 called ‘Who Needs Actions When You Got Words’ and then something interesting happened. His second album, called ‘The Defamation of Strickland Banks’, was an old school soul album made as a soundtrack for a film that did amazingly well in the UK, which really threw all the old fans for a loop, myself included, because it sounded nothing like his hip-hop stuff. Reading up on the backstory behind the album I guess it was originally suppose to be a double album with a hip-hop heavy second disc telling the story of his alter-ego Strickland Banks, but his label made it clear that the soul album did so well for them financially that they no longer had any interest in supporting his original sound. He ended up releasing that album, ‘The Ballad of Belmarsh’ independently, which means I’m going to need to do some internet searches later today to find this.
Well, Plan B is officially back with a new album called ‘ill Manors’, which is about the Occupy movement in the UK. The song is really catchy and a great return for one of my favorite UK rappers.
A lot has been said about Lana Del Rey recently, both good and bad, but mostly bad after her disastrous SNL performance. I was really rooting for her to be awesome that night but, yeah, it kinda sucked. And unfortunately it’s led to a lot of the internet spewing their hatred at her, despite the fact that if you can get past all the hype she’s actually written some really good songs like my personal favorite, “Blue Jeans”. She’d previous released a found footage video for the song that I’ve posted here previously, but the new official video for the song was just so beautiful that I had to share it. It was shot in gorgeous black and white by the same guy who shot Woodkid’s amazing “Iron” video. Enjoy.
This song reminds me a bit of an old Cocteau Twins song. It has that spacey, dream-like quality to it that I’ve always loved from The Cocteau Twins. The video too has a similar van art vibe to it. I kinda feel like I just bought a copy of Dianetics after watching this.
It kind of feels like I’ve been a fan of Saint Etienne’s forever (they’ve been making music since 1990, although I didn’t start buying all of their music until a decade later) and so it’s especially nice to see that they’re back together and still making new music. Sarah Cracknell has such an unusual voice; on one hand I’ve always held the opinion that she can’t really sing in the traditional sense, but on the other hand her voice is totally unique and perfectly suited for the type of indie dance music that Saint Etienne makes. While they’ve had some ups and downs in their career, “Tonight” is right up there with some of Saint Etienne’s best work. It’s as light and bubbly as any of their best tracks.
Someone synced the audio of “Tonight” to the dance scene from Napoleon Dynamite and the two of them go together surprisingly well. It’s a really fun video, much better than the somewhat dull official video that you can also see below:
I’m a huge fan of Tanline’s tropical 80’s synth sound, so much so that I’m kind of surprised that this is actually my first post on this NYC band. (I only mention that they’re from NYC because they sound so much like Aussies. Heck, I’m pretty sure this video might have been shot in Australia. At the very least I know its director is Australian.)
Even though it feels like I’ve been following these guys for years, they’ve actually only just released their debut album, ‘Mixed Emotions’ this week. As you can see from the video for “All Of Me”, their infectious beats and melodies can get even the most beat-down middle management bureaucrat to get up and dance.
I was originally going to post the 360 degree video for “Brothers” last week before the video for “All Of Me” came out, but I couldn’t figure out how to get the interactive video to embed, so I just gave up on it. While watching “All Of Me” I realized there was a YouTube version of “Brothers” that you can check out below. If you’d like to see the 360 degree version, where you get to manipulate the camera and choose where the camera moves, just click this link. I really like the idea, I just think the execution is a little lacking. There isn’t nearly enough going on in the video to make it worth swinging the camera around multiple times.
Of course how I discovered Tanlines was through “Real Life”, which is still one of my all-time favorite songs. Here’s a live recording of the song that they did for Seattle’s own KEXP:
Cults has been a favorite new band on mine for a while now and it’s because of great songs like “You Know What I Mean”. The melody to the verses has this sweet and gentle 60’s girl group pop vibe to it that is then suddenly punctuated by the ratatat impact of the emotion-drenched chorus that hits you like a rabbit punch in the guts. The video appropriately captures this emotional journey with a love story of a girl and a boy who seems to be roped into some business with circus folk.
In the description for this video NZCA/Lines defines “Okinawa Channels” as “Neutral objects become active. Surfaces form conduits for distant messages.” Still not exactly sure what that means, but it does make good inspiration for some pretty synthpop, which you can hear below. Their self-titled debut album is out now.
I don’t post nearly enough Memoryhouse on my blog, which is a damn shame because I really like their music. For those of you who aren’t yet familiar, they sound a bit like if Zooey Deschanel went a little emo and joined Radio Dept. They have a new album out now called ‘The Sideshow Effect’ that you should totally check out.
Marina posted a video for the acoustic version of her new “Primadonna” single this morning, and I might just like it better than the regular version of the song. Stripped away are the big bombastic electronic pop flourishes of the original, which allows her vocals to stand out even more than they did before. I usually favor electronic sounding music over acoustic, but in this case Marina’s sold me.
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