As hooks go, the trick that the New Heathers use to get people to watch their video for “Agatha” is pretty shameless: shoot the band in silhouette, while the train scene from “Stand by Me” plays in the background.
But damned if it doesn’t work.
And for the kind of music the New Heathers play – this song recalls Roger Joseph Manning Jr., if he laid off the pomp and brought the rock – it’s a clever ploy. Anyone who’s into their kind of music surely loves “Stand by Me” as well. And timing the guitar solo with Gordie and Vern’s mad dash to safety was sublime. I’m watching the action, and associating the emotional response with the music. Well done, lads.
You have to feel a little bit bad for OK Go. Ever since they made the one-take, dancing-on-treadmills instant classic video for “Here It Goes Again,” the fifth (!) single from their 2005 album Oh No, they raised the level of expectations for their subsequent music videos impossibly high. You can’t help but wonder if the reason they have taken so long to record a follow-up album is because they were having a hard time coming up with an idea for the album’s first video.
We’re kidding, of course, but still, we’re willing to bet they went through over a hundred treatments before settling on the one for “WTF,” the first single from their upcoming album Of the Blue Colour of the Sky. The press release quotes singer Damian Kulash saying that “there is a lot of Purple Rain on this record,” a statement that we found dubious, to say the least. After all, Trent Reznor once said that Nine Inch Nails were making a Prince record, and the end result was The Fragile. Not quite a Prince record.
But as it turns out, OK Go did channel Prince, though we’d say it’s more Parade than Purple Rain. (Kulash’s falsetto is pure “Kiss.”) Armed with a Yes-like time signature (5/4, for those keeping score at home), “WTF” is one of the band’s best songs yet, and the video is an eye-popper. Using what we believe is referred to in the drug world as the tracer effect, the clips shows the band members walking around a white set, using giant wands to change the colors in the background. The clip looks like it was shot in one take as well, though we’re guessing there are a couple of cuts spliced in there. Either way, it’s a brilliant clip, in a my-head-hurts kind of way.
Posted by Christopher Glotfelty (10/22/2009 @ 2:34 pm)
Weezer looked far and wide during the recording process of their new album, Raditude, which comes out November 3. Aside from collaborations with Jermaine Dupri and members of the All-American Rejects, Weezer also teamed with the phenomenon known as Lil Wayne. Unfortunately, the rapper just pled guilty to gun charges and faces up to a year in prison.
As for the video, it’s as silly as can be, and I wouldn’t expect anything less. The attractive woman walking through the town is Odette Yustman, known for her roles in “Cloverfield” and “The Unborn.”
Posted by Christopher Glotfelty (10/19/2009 @ 4:26 am)
It’s been pretty quiet around the music industry as of late. Tours are underway and bands are just starting to release their new albums during this lucrative season. Other than that, nobody’s breaking up, pissing each other off, or getting into any legal trouble. That’s all well and good, but what is there to discuss? Oh, right! You see, the news of Pavement’s reformation is still fresh in my mind. In 11 brief months, I will be flying to New York City to catch my favorite band on their reunion tour. As more and more dates are unveiled, it appears as though I’ll be attending their final show, which will be historic.
Given the dearth of news, I want to showcase the new music video from Spiral Stairs, one of the guitarists and songwriters from Pavement. He’ll drop his new album, The Real Feel, via Matador on October 20.
The video is for the song “Stolen Pills” and looks like something right out of the 90s. Enjoy!
Posted by Christopher Glotfelty (10/08/2009 @ 1:31 pm)
We’ve got new videos today from two of “indie” rock’s biggest acts. Obviously, I mean indie in the sense of their style of music, as both bands are on a major. While Modest Mouse hasn’t gotten much bigger than they were in 2003, Death Cab for Cutie’s stable seems to grow by the day.
UPDATE: Vimeo won’t let me embed the video at this moment, though I was able to earlier. You can still check it out here.
“Meet Me on the Equinox” is, of course, Death Cab for Cutie’s contribution to the “New Moon” soundtrack. Death Cab takes a back seat in this one as footage from the vampire flick is shown throughout.
Bands must love making videos for songs on soundtracks. They only have to do a tenth as much work.
Of course, the majority of the video for “New Perspective,” the lead single by Panic! at the Disco from the soundtrack to the Diablo Cody-penned horror flick “Jennifer’s Body” (which is not being screened for the press, by the way), consists of singer Brendon Urie and drummer Spencer Smith, along with what we’re guessing are body doubles, walking in slo-mo through a high school. A couple cat fights break out, as the action cuts from the high school to the clips from the film, where Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried are either fighting or making out. When Megan isn’t eating boys alive, anyway.
Truth be told, the video is not of major significance to us. What is of major significance is the fact that Panic! is literally half the band they were the last time we heard from them. Guitarist Ryan Ross and bassist Jon Welker left the band in July, citing the age-old musical differences. Urie and Smith will continue as Panic, while Ross and Welker have formed a group called the Young Veins, which will be more ’60s oriented in sound. After a quick spin of the Young Veins song “Change” on their MySpace page, the sound of “New Perspective” makes much more sense. It’s more in line with the band’s debut album, A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, in that it’s wordy and contemporary. Does that mean Ross and Welker were the brains behind Pretty. Odd, the band’s Beatleriffic sophomore album? And was their departure due to insistence by Urie and Smith that they ditch the retro stuff because it didn’t sell as well?
Personally, we can’t help but think the answer to that last question is ‘yes,’ because the first thing Urie and Smith did after Ross and Welker left the band was put that goddamn exclamation point back into their name. Sigh.
As someone who once had a significant portion of his junior year of college ruined by a gentleman cranking “A Country Boy Can Survive” at all hours of the day and night, I’ve never been a big fan of Hank Williams, Jr., but when you grow up in the South, you learn to accept Bocephus as part of your life whether you actually like him or not. Plus, over the years, I’ve become a fan of his father (Hank, Sr.) and of his son (Hank III), so I feel like I ought to cut the good ol’ boy a little bit of slack.
Junior’s new album, 127 Rose Avenue, is due for release on June 16th, and although the first single – “Red, White, and Pink-Slip Blues” – is tailor-made for the old-school country audiences, you have to admit that it does indeed speak to the current economic climate, not just of the South but of the entire United States. Of course, given that this comes from a man who turned up at Republican rallies in Virginia Beach, VA, and crooned an excruciating little ditty called “McCain Palin Tradition,” you can imagine that most of the comments over on YouTube for this video involve assurances that the events discussed the song are all the fault of Barack Obama.
Whatever. All I know is that I like the dark twang of this track. Maybe you will, too.
We were admittedly late to the Metric party, but after hearing the band’s fantastic new album Fantasies, we are officially smitten. And how cool is this: they just made a video for “Sick Muse,” the song we’ve been putting on mix discs since the album’s release.
The clip itself is simple one: the camera stays still while the band members play, or dance, or sing, or whatever they feel like doing. And if Emily Haines doesn’t have the cutest dance ever, we don’t know who does. Swoon. And as a bonus, this player – which defaults to auto-play, grrrr – contains videos for “Gimme Sympathy” and “Help I’m Alive” as well, along with audio streams of the entire Fantasies album. Sweeeeeeet.
Ladies and gentlemen, the line for Single of the Year starts here.
I’m frankly shocked that these guys are from New York. American bands, particularly young ones, don’t write songs like this anymore, and they certainly don’t use arrangements like this. I had these guys pegged for a UK act all the way, with the Adam & the Ants-style percussion, hand claps and old-fashioned piano. Maybe the arrangement was producer Britt Daniel’s idea, who knows. His band Spoon isn’t exactly playing the American game, either. No matter who’s responsible for putting it together, it’s damn good, and had me racing for the band’s MySpace page. How about that, the other tunes are good, too. Time to hit up the publicist for a review copy. (The band’s album, It’s Frightening, comes out May 19.)
So the tune is definitely a keeper. Now about about the video? Tastefully simple, a rarity these days. The camera spins around – and sometimes above – a circular display of white lights that surrounds the band. That’s it. I bet they shot it in an afternoon, then hit the pub, while the director popped a couple Dramamines and went to bed. Nicely done, lads.
