Another month has gone by as we all tick slowly towards the grave, and it’s time for another Videodrome, The Playlist’s occasional round-up of the music videos that have taken our fancy of late. If you missed the first one last month, you can find it here.
After the jump, we’ve got videos starring Emma Watson and Christina Hendricks, directed by the likes of So Me and The Malloys, and bands like Interpol, MGMT and Vampire Weekend.
First up is one of the biggest names to appear in a music video in quite some time; “Harry Potter” star Emma Watson, who appears in the New York-set video for British indie band One Night Only’s single “Say You Don’t Want It” (via @neongoldrecords). We’re a little baffled by this one; the band are, generously, C-list landfill indie at best, the song’s pretty weak, and the video’s not even that interesting (despite the frankly bizarre “Lady & The Tramp” twist at the end). So why on earth would Watson choose it to make her first acting appearance since wrapping on the “Harry Potter” franchise? Oh right, the band’s frontman George Craig is Watson’s boyfriend…
In happier star-in-music-video news, “Mad Men” star Christina Hendricks appears in the clip for “The Ghost Inside,” the latest cut from the excellent album by Broken Bells (a collaboration between super-producer Danger Mouse and Shins frontman James Mercer). Courtesy of Stereogum, it’s reminiscent of Hendricks’ appearances on Joss Whedon’s “Firefly.” It’s an FX-packed promo where the actress plays a robotic space pilot forced to sell off her limbs to complete her journey. It’s definitely kind of an oddity, and not what we would have expected from the track, but it’s well done, and the direction, from rising horror helmer Jacob Gentry (“The Signal,” “My Super Psycho Sweet 16”) is solid. Keep your eyes peeled for the band’s cameo as well.
Another musician called in a favour from a big actress to appear in her latest video, although we can’t imagine it was too tricky for Charlotte Gainsbourg to hire herself for her own video which accompanies the most recent track from her Beck collaboration album IRM (via Pitchfork). It’s gorgeously shot, by photographer and Mike Mills collaborator Todd Cole, and has a uniquely woozy style to it that matches the song, and indeed the excellent album, perfectly. Although, is it just us, or is there a weird “Twilight” vibe to the clip?…
Gainsbourg isn’t the only one spending some time by the sea; British indie band Veronica Falls are spending some time at “Beachy Head,” a clifftop on the south coast of England which has become best known as a suicide spot. The clip, which we found at Gorilla Vs. Bear, isn’t going to turn the industry upside down, but, like the cracking song, it’s infused with a classic C86 vibe. What’s most notable is the look of the video (by relative newcomer Philippa Bloomfield); it’s been filmed on the Canon 5D, a digital SLR camera capable of shooting very high quality HD video. It’s not a perfect piece of kit (yet), but, as you can see here, capable of some pretty amazing results, and it seems like it’ll only be a matter of time before someone — Soderbergh? — uses it on a feature.
Lo-fi post-punk is in in a pretty big way at the moment, and London three piece Trash Kit are a good example; they rattle through 17 tracks in 27 minutes on their debut album all of which have a similar Talulah Gosh/Vivian Girls vibe. The video is as lo-fi as the song (particularly the acting at the start…), but its Mighty Boosh-meets-“The Warriors” vibe is positively infectious, and we’d be very interested to see what director Charles Chintzer Lai could come up with on a bigger budget. Thanks to No Action for this one.
Sharing Trash Kit’s anarchic spirit, albeit in a rather more lavish manner, are Vampire Weekend in their new promo for “Holiday.” Since they started, they’ve made a habit of working with some of the top video directors, like Hammer & Tongs (Garth Jennings and Nick Goldsmith) and Richard Ayoade, and the latest one sees them parodying their image as snobby Ivy Leaguers by dressing up as pre-revolutionary French aristocrats and running around beating up surfers. It’s their second time working with the Malloy Brothers, directors of the recent White Stripes movie “Under the Great White Northern Lights,” who were also behind their last clip, the Jake-Gyllenhaal-and-Li’l-Jon-play-tennis video for “Giving Up The Gun.” This isn’t quite as good as that one, but it’s still an entertaining couple of minutes. (Via MTV)
They aren’t the only band using a nostalgic aesthetic this time around; Mystery Jets have adopted a French New Wave style for the video “Dreaming Of Another World,” the lead single from third album “Serotonin” (courtesy of Promo News). It’s from French director Yoann Lemoine, who’s previously been behind videos for Moby and Yelle, and it’s very much style over substance, like a sun-kissed iPhone Hipstamatic picture come to life. Having said that, the lighting is absolutely glorious.
Keeping it Gallic is director So-Me, who was behind one of our favorites last time, Jamaica’s “I Think I Like U 2.” He’s delivered a video for MGMT’s single “It’s Working,” (on the band’s official site) one of the more bearable tracks on their disappointing second album. As you might think from a collaboration between this lot, after about thirty seconds it starts to replicate the effect of taking some fairly powerful hallucinogenics, landing somewhere between “Inland Empire,” “Primer” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” There’s a sly sense of humor at work, however, which manages to prevent it from becoming too far up itself.
Also on the more surreal end of the spectrum is the return of Interpol with their new single “Lights,” off their forthcoming self-titled album (also from their official site). Directed by acclaimed photographer Charlie White (who was also behind the sublimely creepy video for their song “Evil”), it begins with the legend “Deep within the inner chambers of the Three-horned Rhinoceros Beetle (Chalcosoma caucasus), a closely guarded pheromone-harvesting ritual is about to begin” and it’s about as impenetrable as that would suggest. Art-directed to a T, and as slow-burning as the track, it’s essentially a rubber-fetishist’s wet dream, and all the better for it.
As playful as the Interpol video is serious is Warren Fu’s video for the new Mark Ronson & The Business track “Bang Bang Bang” (via Clash) We’d become pretty sick of Ronson and his brass section, but the song is an enjoyably bouncy slice of hip-hop (featuring Q-Tip and rising popster MNDR). It uses the same retro “Tron” influenced aesthetic as Fu’s clips for The Strokes’ “You Only Live Once” and Julian Casablancas’ “11th Dimension,” framed as an episode of a Japanese TV show. Fu’s background as a VFX artist at ILM is very much in evidence, and manages to prevent it from feeling like the straight-up performance video it could have been.
Finally, we come to our two picks of the month. First up is a stunning semi-official video for The Maccabees’ “Young Lions,” from another VFX artist, Peter Szewczyk. After finishing on “Avatar,” Szewczyk fancied turning his hand to directing, and approached Maccabees frontman Orlando Weeks with his pitch, based partly on the James Thurber short story “Moth and the Star.” Amazingly, considering the number of CGI shots, the whole thing was done for about £750, with Szewczyk shooting the whole thing on our old friend the Canon 5D (seriously, even considering what we imagine is a fairly heavy amount of grading, how stunning does that footage look?) (Promo News)
One of The Playlist’s favorite records of the year so far is Gorilla Manor, the debut by LA band Local Natives, and one of our favorite tracks on it is “World News.” It’s got a new video (via NME), from director Matthew Lessner, and, while a little obtuse, it is consistently surprising, incredibly well shot (by DoP Wyatt Garfield), and has a joyous summer feel that hits the nail on the head for this sweltering July. Lessner’s been behind various videos in the past, including the llama-fest for Dirty Projectors’ “Stillness Is The Move.” His short film “Darling Darling,” which starred a young Michael Cera, won a ton of awards, and he’s currently in post on the promising-looking feature “The Woods” — we’ll be sure to keep an eye on him in future.
