I take what I said about MGMT. This song should be their single.
It has been the soundtrack to my brain for the past couple days. I think MGMT is brainwashing me to listen to Brian Eno. I found myself listening to Brian Eno album Here Come the Warm Jets yesterday and my head is a little clearer.
I love the jumpy, manic feel this song has and the weird key they play in (sounds all horror show). The song reminds me of a band from Peoria, Illinois called The Amazing Kill-o-Watts. I went through their back catalogue trying to find the song it reminded me of, but I was unsuccessful. Anyone from get the same feeling I do?
Dum Dum Girls feel like lofi-ed 60s pop rock with a hint of 90s girl-la-la twee. They have certainly have a sunny, summery feel, like the Jacuzzi Boys, although Dum Dum Girls come from the West coast. With the hot summer ramping up, this is the music I feel like walking to while sweat drips down the back of my neck.
This video has a washed out female Easy Rider feel with lofi video effects to match the song. My favorite part is the scene that looks like a clip from a French new wave film with subtitles. It gives smoking that sexy ennui before it become a dirty habit associated with sleazy car salesmen and cancer.
Oh how the mighty fall, well at least stumble. MGMT helped usher in a wave of good and not-so-good electro-pop. With a handful of singles, MGMT permeated pop culture in 2008-09. Kids and Time to Pretend showed up not only in every hipster's party mix, but in teen dramas like Gossip Girl, clothing store soundtracks, and commercials. French President Nicolas Sarkozy illegally puts Kids in some of his videos and played it at rallies and had to copyright infringement. (This happened as he was trying to pass a law to deny Internet access to file-sharers)
The point is that MGMT was one-hot-hit-making machine. Everyone was salivating for the next round of pop hits to accompany the kissing scene for their teen vampire show or sell their Bar-B-Que sauce or to play in the background to convince the young kids that they are still hip. But that didn't happen.
Instead, MGMT put out a record with no singles, no electro-pop, and nothing that sounds like the two songs that everyone knows. Ad-men and suburban teenagers everywhere moved on to tow-headed teen boys that sing like Stevie Wonder.
The record isn't bad at all. Congratulations isn't the wonder-child album that Oracular Spectacular is. It's much more rock and roll and pulls from old psych-pop and maybe some geek rock from the 80s.
The problem here is that MGMT is MGMT. If this record was released by an unknown group called MGNT or MGNR, the album would have been consumed in a completely different way. Congratulations is being panned for being inaccessible and pretentious, which may be true, but it is mainly being panned for not being Kids or Time to Pretend.
I want to talk about the video, but it is forgettable. The duo has shed their wild and colorful rag-tag outfits for tight jeans, Buddy Holly glasses, and plaid shits. For being a psych-pop song, this video is surprisingly strait-laced. Magical IKEA furniture that dispenses pink ice cream, contains a dollhouse and an angel ballerina sounds like it was dreamed up by a committee of the suburban teens that watch the vampire show. Oh I get it...it was all a dream. Yawn.
If you are bored you can count the excessive number of dashes I used to this post, I will send you a psychedelic unicorn that poops pink ice cream.
This isn't exactly a music video as much as it is a live performance, but it should be the music video for this song.
The X-Ray Spex were a short-lived teenage punk band from the late 70s in the UK. They are sometimes credited as the first grrrl rock band more than a decade before the riot grrrl movement and this song could easily be considered the first riot grrrl song. Poly Styrene, the woman screeching and wailing, paved the way for decades of feminist rock. See the Raincoats, Sleater Kinney, Patti Smith, and Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
This song is manic emancipatory rock. Poly Styrene starts the song, "Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard. Well I think, OH BONDAGE, UP YOURS!" and never relents.
zZz is a Dutch duo that uses just a drum kit, an organ, and a some effects. I don't really know much about them other than, I like this song and I love this video.
Whether the the director intended it or not, this video is an homage to the long running Korean television show Kasou Taishou. Twice a year, there is a competition to impress the audience with the most innovative and entertaining skits. One specific type of skit became popular and now the show is known for it.
The people competing on Kasou Taishou create live special effects. The point is to act out something that would normally be done with camera tricks and editing. The most famous skit from Kasou Taishou is Matrix Ping Pong. It was a hot internet meme several years ago so most of you have probably come across it. There are thirty years of skits from this show, some more clever than Matrix Ping Ping.
The zZz video is at inspired by Kasou Taishou, but also include some fresh ideas. Pay attention to the progress bar slowly being painted throughout the whole.
Los Massieras is a DJ duo that is part the disco scene in Spain and in Berlin, Germany. The label/collective is Discoteca Oceano in Spain, but Los Massieras are on an off-shoot label called Bananamania, based in Berlin. Whatever the lineage, the music coming out of this scene is good. They revive the electronic sounds and the dance feel from disco, thankfully leaving the orchestral instrumentation of late 70s disco behind.
The video is the highlight here. The creator Gerson Aguerri seemlessly combines animation and some live-action shots to create a world reminiscent of HG Wells's distant future in The Time Machine with the Eloi and the Morlocks. The camera constantly pans through a world with peaceful furry humanoids being attacked by Skeletor-looking bat people that turn everything into static. I love that world loops through the video several times and you see the destruction as the invasion progresses. The whole video is beautifully devious.
My roommate mentioned that the last I posted of Mazzy Star's Fade Into You looks very similar to this Alanis Morrissette and I agree. It has the same blown out look in a desert interspersed with slow, choppy video clips, but for a completely different effect. Rather than being slow and lonely, this video is harsh and angry.
I posted this video for several other reason. Sure, I love this song and the entire album, Jagged Little Pill. Alanis Morissette is a staple of the mid 90s and she helped paved the way for mildly confrontational female pop rock artists like Meredith Brooks in the 90s and Avril Lavigne in the 00s.
Another reason is that Alanis Morissette just got married a couple days ago to rapper Mario Treadway aka Souleye (not the Souleye from Sweden that does chiptune music).
Finally, this song is important because of who it is about. Alanis Morissette has claimed that song is about a specific person, but has never revealed who that person is, similar to the legend surrounding Carly Simon's You're So Vain. For over a decade, there have been rumors about who she was talking about, but now most people believe that it was Dave Coulier.
Yes, Uncle Joey from Full House is most likely who Alanis Morissette "went down on in a theater". To give you some context, here is Dave Coulier:
According to Snopes, the reason that they broke up is that Dave Coulier wanted to start a family but Alanis felt she was too young. At that point, Dave Coulier had already been married and divorced with a kid and I guess he wanted something serious. Well I guess Alanis won out in the end because now she has married and poor Uncle Joey has remained a bachelor.
Sci-fi Music Videos Week, Day 5, Styx - Mr. Roboto
Intro film
Mr Roboto
Mr. Roboto is part of a concept album released by Styx called Kilroy was Here. The concept is explained in the short film that goes with Mr. Roboto. Its truly amazing and you should watch it first. Styx used to start every show with the 10 minute film.
The story line is that the world has been taken over by a group called the Majority for Music Morality, who aren't concerned with money or power, just making sure no one can listen to rock and roll. The authoritarian powers imprison not political agitators but rock stars. This has to be the best scifi music project ever. Also robots walk around cursing in Japanese (I guess Japan became a superpower because they build the best robots?).
The music video for Mr. Roboto picks up where the film leaves off. Dennis Deyoung plays Kilroy, the imprisoned rock star who kills a robot and takes his suit to escape. He escapes to find the rock and roll dissident Jonathan Chance so that they can bring down the anti-rock government together. Mr. Roboto is about Kilroy's search for Chance and then the unveiling as he reveals he is not a robot.
Oh and I am not sure what "the modren man" is, but I know he likes to wear purple.
Sci-fi Music Videos Week, Day 4, David Bowie - Space Oddity
Bowie is the grandfather of scifi inspired rock. Ever since Bowie's second album, Space Oddity, and the song with the same name, Bowie has had a scifi bent. The album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars is a concept album about an alien who is bringing the news of Earth's impending demise. Even though all of the songs have a scifi theme, none of the video follow the theme.
This video is great for several reasons. You get to see young Bowie, clean cut and crooked teeth. Space Oddity introduces the character Major Tom. Major Tom pops up in later songs, like Ashes to Ashes and in other artists songs, most notably the song Major Tom (Coming Home) by Peter Shilling.
In the video, Major Tom is floating around in space craft. You know it is Major Tom thanks to the giant name tag on his chest. Major Tom all of a sudden falls through space, but of course he is saved by two beautiful girls. They take him back to their space bed to spoon with Bowie.
You've probably never heard this version of Space Oddity before. This was the original version on the album. You are probably more familiar with this recording that came out with the release of the Aladdin Sane album.
Sci-fi Music Videos Week, Day 3, The Darkness - I Believe in a Thing Called Love
This video is campy 70s scifi goodness. A David Bowie-like singer circa-Ziggy Stardust sings in falsetto while battling a tentacle monster with his laser guitar. What more could you want?
This song is The Darkness's one hit. Its fun, sounds like Queen, and gets stuck in your head.
Sci-fi Music Videos Week, Day 2, Sigur Rós - Untitled #1 (Vaka)
Vaka truly illustrates the potential of the music video as an art form itself.
Sigur Ros is a prolific Icelandic band that you have probably heard in a movie, if you have heard an album. They have a very distinct sound, ethereal and atmospheric with very high-pitched vocals. Jónsi Birgisson sings both in Icelandic and Hopelandic, a nonsense language made up of syllable from the Icelandic language.
They started on Iceland's most well-known label, Smekkleysa (Bad Taste). It's a label started by the Sugarcubes, Iceland's indie gods from the 80s who helped shoot the lead singer, Bjork, to international fame. Iceland is a tiny island nation with a population smaller than Minneapolis, but they produce a lot of good music.
The video shares the sullen beauty that is exemplified in the song. School children bundle up to go outside and play in the flurries of ash of nuclear winter. Wearing WW2 style gas masks, they throw ashballs and make ashmen. The video ends a young boys mask falls off and he slip away.
The ending is very peculiar for a music video. The song ends nearly a minute before the end of the video, and the rest is done in silence, as if giving priority to the video and not the song. However, I don't believe this is the case. They are giving priority to the experience. The music and the visuals are interwoven to create a new work that conveys a new message and elicits a different emotional response. The absence of sound in the last minute is no longer silence, but a part of the song and completes the final product, the music video.
Sci-fi Music Videos Week, Day 1, Yeasayer - Ambling Alp
Yeasayer is an experimental Brooklyn band with obvious world music influences. They have just released their new record Odd Blood. It is about time. It has been nearly three years.
This video is an homage to Alejandro Jodorowsky's 1973 film, Holy Mountain. If you have never heard of it, check out the trailer here.
Holy Mountain is amazing and all sorts of messed up. Supposedly, the cast meditated together for 3 months before the shooting and were on psychedelic drugs for at least one scene. John Lennon and Yoko through in some money for production which doesn't surprise me because the movie is like a visual interpretation of one of her songs.
You could argue that this video isn't exactly sci-fi, but avant-garde or surrealist. To you I say, shut up and watch the video.
Closer is Nine Inch Nails most well-known song and probably the most well-known video. Even though both the song and the video were censored, it was on heavy rotation on MTV in the mid-90s.
How Nine Inch Nails made it to the mainstream is still a mystery to me. The 90s was not a good time for electronic music. The glitz and glam and the plastic, colorful shallowness of the 80s was being rejected. The rough singer-songerwriter and the garage band were kings of the 90s as grunge exploded. Perhaps thats how Nine Inch Nails made it into hearts of angry teens of the 90s.
Whether you like their aesthetic or not, Nine Inch Nails kept synths alive in the 90s. The only other electronic music going on was the techno/house/electronica raver scene, but that music never really made it to the mainstream. While that era of electronic was important, most of it was repetitive and formulaic, with some notable exceptions (Aphex Twin is one).
This video is reinterpretation of the stop-motion short film, Street of Crocodiles, inspired by the art work of Joel-Peter Witkin. Check them out and you can see what I am talking about.
This video caught my eye earlier today. Its a little gothy and unsettling but its a pretty great video with convincing special effects that don't in the way.
The song starts off slow and then the vocals come in. I thought, "there is something vaguely familiar about this music," but I couldn't place it. As the video goes on, there are morbid scenes of two people bludgeoned to death and one of them singing. After a couple minutes, I recognize what the song reminds me of, Nine Inch Nails.
Part of me thought, "hey its another goth/industrial through back band trying to be Nine Inch Nails, but at least there isn't a white guy poorly rapping in the background." (ala Evanescence)
The other part of me though, "wow, they guys do Nine Inch Nails really well." The songs sounds like it could have come from the golden era of Nine Inch Nails, off of Downward Spiral or even The Fragile. Those were two albums that got me through years of teenager anger and depression. I wore out and re-purchased the Downward Spiral CD three different times.
So, I finish the video and check out the bands website. Yeah, well in case you haven't guessed already...its Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails and his wife is singing.
After a few listens I just had to dig out Downward Spiral and listen to it again. Last year I bought the vinyl version of the Downward Spiral for more money than I wanted to admit spending. I listened it once and thought, "why did I spend so much money on a record I probably will listen to once and put away." [you get to hear a lot my thoughts in the post today]
This was a turning point for me in the realm of buying vinyl. In my late twenties, I don't find myself listening to Nine Inch Nails as much as my late teens, but Downward Spiral is still a vital album to my musical identity. Downward Spiral was on my list of albums that are important to me and I felt obligated to buy it. It was at that point I realized that I was truly turning into a vinyl collector, and I was ok with that.
Well I am glad to know my fears about never listening to the album again were unfounded. A year later I have found a time in my life that I just need to listen to Downward Spiral and it was just sitting there waiting for me.
Small Black (check out their blog) is a two-piece from Long Island who has been touring with Washed Out with a self-released EP that has been getting some hype. They have the lo-fi summery synth sound that is all the rage right now (see this Jacuzzi Boys video). There is something really peaceful about this song.
This video is a beautiful slice of the life of an aging surfer. The guy with the handlebar mustache is the lead singer's uncle Matt. Its reminds me a lot of Darren Aronofsky's stunning film The Wrestler from 2008. Its about a washed up professional wrestler who can't give up the professional that is killing him. Its the best film from 2008.
If you haven't seen the wrestler, you may have seen the 2009 movie that basically stole the script from the wrestler, inserted a country music singer, and gave the story a sappy, happy ending. That movie was called Crazy Heart. Well, this video is like a real-life version of the Wrestler or Crazy Heart, but doesn't rip-off either films. Its beautiful in its own way.
Believe it or not, but this group started as a black metal band called Skull. They were part of the Swedish metal scene and they reinvented themselves in early 2000. In order to set themselves apart from their roots and the rest of the Swedish grindcore bands, they chose the name Teddybears.
Cobrastyle has been around since 2004 and you have probably heard it somewhere. Its been in television shows, movies, advertisements, videogames, corporate shopping background music, and sports games in between clips of 2 Unlimited's Get Ready for This and Techtronic's Pump Up the Jam. It is one of the most recognized songs that you don't know who sings and you don't know the title.
Other than being inserted as the background of every form of mass entertainment, there is another reason that you recognize this song. Cobrastyle is the result of mixing several songs from 80s artists like Sugar Hill Gang and Fine Young Cannibals. Kid Rock refenences some of the same songs in his song Bawitaba. So even if its possible that you haven't heard this song, you have heard the songs that make up this song.
The video is a great commentary and on the excesses of rock and roll of the 80s. Its a documentary style Spinal Tap-esque video with giant teddy bear heads. Its funny with great references to famous rock and roll scandals. I also love that they are playing an Atari game that is 8-bit. (Atari is only 4-bit for those of you not nerdy enough to know.)
I now this post is sounding negative, but I am not anti-Cobrastyle. There is a reason that this song is so ubiquitous, its catchy and fun. Its a mix of styles and time periods. While there is a lot of 80s elements in this song and video, it doesn't sound or look like the 80s at all. Its unique in a familiar way.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers are a divisive band in rock. Like U2, they have a huge following with millions of fans and with An international following, they can pack a stadium in almost any country. However, as their careers have progressed, their music has become less and less interesting. Well, because they are so well-known, it is hard not to have an opinion about them, so they end up becoming a love/hate band.
No matter your opinion the the Chili Peppers, it is hard to deny that this earlier song is still good. And it hard not to like this video.
Gus van Sant, the director of Drugstore Cowboys and Good Will Hunting, also directed this video. It won Viewers Choice Best Video and Breakthrough Video at the MTV Music awards and deservedly so. There are so many great images in this video. Notably, the guitarist solemnly playing against a fake desert backdrop, Anthony Keidis walking around LA and interacting with peeple, and the final scene of Keidis running heedlessly toward the camera in slow motion while an atomic explosion expands in the background. This was a very influential video and traces of its impact can be seen all throughout the 90s.
The Nurses are psych-rock out of Portland OR. Their music is intimate and entrancing with a touch of haunting weirdness. Most of the songs feature an old echo-y piano that drifts beautifully in and out of tune supplemented by some other oddly altered instrument. What gets you are the ethereal vocal harmonies that span several octaves.
This song is off of The Nurses latest album Apple's Acre. The first time I played the album when the LP came out, everyone in the house came out of their rooms at some point during the album and said, "Who is this? I know I have heard them before." I don't think anyone had heard The Nurses before, but there is something that feels so at home, so natural and familiar about their music while being completely new. Apple's Acre isn't an album that needs to grow on you. It just feels right the first time you listen to it.
The VCR kaleidoscope collage really compliments the music. It has the same calming, homemade simplicity the makes the song so wonderful.
Rivers Cuomo wrote two of the greatest and most important albums of the 90's. Both albums fathered entire sub-genres. In 1994, Weezer's The Blue Album is a cornerstone of geek rock and it inspired countless nerdy high school garage bands and even some famous ones (see Ok Go). Two years later, Pinkerton was released, but wasn't well received. Rolling Stone called it one of the worst albums of 1996. However, as you well know, Rolling Stone was barely relevant in the 90's and isn't relevant at all in 2010. Pinkerton grew in popularity after 1996 and is one of the cornerstones of both Blue Sweater Emo and Eyeliner Emo.
Unfortunately, Rivers Cuomo took the rejection of his masterpiece pretty bad and Weezer stopped playing for nearly four years. As the early Internet was starting to explode, the online fan base was exploding with it. Armed with 14 new songs and minus Matt Sharp (bass player, founder of The Rentals), Weezer sold out several tours in 2000. With tons of hype and excited fans, they went to the studio to record their third album. They enlisted Ric Ocasek of the Cars, the producer of the Blue Album, to return and produce number three.
This is where the story goes sour. An exec from Geffen, their record label, came by to hear the songs and he didn't like them. So what did the band do? They moved to a new studio and Rivers wrote an album's worth of songs on the spot. Instead of recording meticulously crafted, interesting, heart-felt music as they once did, Weezer recorded 10 simple, formulaic, bland, lifeless songs for the Green Album.
And that was it. Weezer, one of the most important bands of the 90's, died, and in its place and empty space. --- Pink Triangle was a song on Pinkerton, but this video wasn't released until 2004. It was created by Karl Koch, the super roadie and band documentarian. He is a great guy. Back in 2000, me and some friends followed Weezer around the Midwest for three tours. I had been talking to Karl every night after the shows, he was an awesome guy. We didn't have tickets for a show in Columbia, Missouri and it was sold out. It looked like we weren't getting in, but then I bumped into Karl. He said we were lucky Weezer didn't have many friends in Missouri and he let us in as guests of the band. We got in before everyone else and stood right in the front. That was the best rock show I have seen.
The xx was all the rage last year. Their calm, minimalist stylings have made them a favorite of music critics and anyone that wears all black and has a dramatic hair swoop. Their music is good, but all of the songs sound the same. Hopefully there will be a bit more diversity on the next album.
Islands is a good song and the music video makes it so much better. The video really fits well with their entire sound as a band: a well-choreographed, artful construction played over and over again with hypnotic repetition. I am really not a fan of interpretive dance, I am drawn to this video. There is so much simultaneously going on in each short clip that you find yourself focusing one person or one dance move for several cycles. You can't really take in everything that is going even in one viewing. I guess if you can appreciate the repitition and subtle beauty of the video, you should be able to appreciate The xx.
