Don't let the barriers you have built to define who you are blind you from appreciating the unfamiliar.

Friday, June 11, 2010

Mazzy Star - Fade Into You



Stupid EMI YouTube link that doesn't allow embedding.

As I mentioned in my last post, I Can Hardly Wait sounds very similar to Fade Into You. Mazzy Star is much cleaner and this song is in 3/4 as opposed to 4/4, but the music is very similar, even down to the slide guitar at the end of the song.

Mazzy Star had one hit, but they never really were a hit making type of band. Their music was slow, shoe-gazey, post-punk. I think they got lucky with Fade Into You, but the fame was well deserved. This song is a darkly beautiful ballad that exemplifies one wave of alternative music in the mid-nineties. I still get shivers listening to Hope Sandoval's haunting wail.

The video is also visual time capsule of music videos from that era that were heavily influenced by Gus van Sant's music video for Red Hot Chili Peppers. The shots of band loosely arranged performing together are interspersed with shots of driving, landscapes, and random things treated with some film effect. The washed out look was also very popular (see Alanis Morrisette's You Oughta Know).

Beyond that, I just love the feel of the video. It does what a good video should do, echo the feelings of the song. The video has a lonely, melancholy feel that is accentuated by the shots of the wide empty desert and the bright overpowering sun. Share/Bookmark

3 comments:

  1. "Into Dust" is also amazing. I always felt like they were meant to be played together.

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  2. Also!

    "Past All Concerns" by Barzin is the male counterpart song to "Fade Into You".

    These are all my favorite songs from high school.

    Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAZUkzYbSDk

    It won't let me embed the video, do you have that disabled?

    ReplyDelete
  3. I don't see any options for allowing or not allowing HTML in comments. Where would I change it?

    ReplyDelete