Surprisingly, I haven’t thrown up one of these video round-ups in about a month. So let’s cut to the chase and bring you some of my favorite music related finds from this past week:
Probably one of the best in-studio video recordings I’ve seen since The Morning Benders Yours Truly session, Annie Lennox (St. Vincent), Liars, OS Mutantes, and Beck all look like they are having fun covering the famed 80s and early 90s Australian rock group INXS [via GvB]:
Props to the guys over at Schmooze Blog for being the first to notice this awesomely constructed summer encapsulating video for the much-buzzed-about band Cults’s track “Go Outside”:
Really been loving the latest Beko release by the French group La Femme — especially their killer track “Sur La Planche” (or, if my high school French skills are to be trusted, “On the Board” for us Anglophiles). Posted literally minutes ago on the always wonderful Delicious Scopitone, here is a spy-like vid for La Femme’s electro-haunting track “Françoise”:
Although relatively poor quality, here is Josiah and Yoni from Why? covering the beautiful Silver Jews track “Trains Across the Sea” a year and a half ago in Le Havre, France:
The tag-team duo of sweet singer Laura Gibson & mulit-instrumentalist Ethan Ross released a music video for their track “Younger” about two weeks back. Although I’m a little late to the party, the video is so beautifully shot that it is worth a second look even if you’ve already seen it:
Keeping it Portland, here’s the latest music video for White Hinterland’s “Amsterdam” which You Ain’t No Picasso appropriately captioned as “easily the best video about wolves and pickles I’ve ever seen”:
What’s a video round-up without La Blogotheque? This time it’s five tracks from the artist of the year nominee Beach House:
Thanks to a quick response to a Jackpot Record’s tweet calling for people’s favorite Swedish group (me: El Perro del Mar), I was able to score two free tickets to the sold-out night show at Doug Fir Lounge featuring one of Brooklyn’s best multi-instrumentalist, St. Vincent.
Way before Ms. Annie Clark hit the stage, Sweden’s popular percussion duo Wildbirds & Peacedrums set the night off right with their crazy performance. Much like those who try to classify Animal Collective or Deerhoof, it’s easy to fall into the trap of using exotic adjectives and erudite music terms in order to whip up the best description (apparently Sweden didn’t want any part of this, preferring instead to award them Jazz Act of the Year in 2007 — something they DEFINITELY aren’t — and be done with it). I mean, how are you suppose to lump a band whose instrumentation consists of a nine-piece drum set, mallet instruments, steel drum, and oddball percussion into a category? You just can’t — and their unique sound is what draws most to their music.
Anchored by the raw talent of drummer extraordinaire Andreas Werliin, you can’t help but be hypnotized watching his arms chaotically flinging around as he reproduces some of the fat beats W&P is known for. In fact, I was almost positive both of his limbs were going to snap in two banging out “There Is No Light” — a fast pace no holds barred track with A LOT of tom-tom drums. Not to be outdone, singer (and Werliin’s wife) Mariam Wallentin goes all sort of Liz Bougatsos crazy on stage, erratically moving her body enough to make me coin the dance term Scandinavian Shake. With Wallentin, however, it’s not all flash as she proved herself to be more than musically capable with this performance. Belting out soulful lyrics left-and-right while playing some calypso steel drums, she was able to draw my attention from Werliin on several occasions, which was no easy task!
It’s more than befuddling to me that there are no SXSW dates scheduled for W&P, as they are slated to wrap up their US tour opening for St. Vincent at the end of February and then head back home to Sweden. Unique enough to be set-apart from the thousands of bands that descend upon Austin annually as well as their ability to generate a lot of energy in short set times, to me, they are the perfect SXSW band. Who knows, they might get a change of heart in the near-future as they pick up hoards of fans with this tour.
Needless to say, the crowd swelled to capacity and the anticipation grew to feverish levels during the intermission between sets. Although performing an early matinee, apparently it wasn’t enough to satiate Portland’s St. Vincent appetite.
Taking the stage in a tight-fitting black dress with elaborate circular shoulder ruffles, the petite Annie Clark looks like the antithesis of a rock star, and with an album cover more Forty Year-Old Virgin than Andrew WK, I have to say I was more than eager to see how she would carry herself on-stage. Opening with “Stranger”, the beginning track to 2009’s Actor, all doubts were squashed about her rocking ability when she got to the noise-filled guitar line midway through.
Alternating effortlessly between Andrew Bird-like woodwind melodies and My Bloody Valentine shoegaze, it seems like Clark suffers from the musical equivalent of bipolar disorder. With the ability to change gears instantaneously (at one point, hammering the shit out her guitar with her hands before gently plucking away a measure later), the performance was definitely not lacking surprises. There were several times the music sounded like perfect bedtime songs for children and then *BAM* blood-red lights flooded the stage and Clark looked like she was getting an exorcism performed on her. I wouldn’t be the bit surprised if the little kids who accompanied their parents to the earlier all-ages day show had nightmares when they went to bed.
Championed by the Vivian Girls, Finally Punk, Pearl Harbor, Explode Into Colors, and Best Coast, all-girl low-fi garage bands seem to be making a resurgence. Females are slowly gaining market share in a male-dominated occupation, however they are still being treated as second-class acts by critics, relegated to an inferior, almost novelty, genre of “girl rock” (you know, all the “they’re a great band — for girls” high-school bullshit statements). With her music, St. Vincent seems to be taking these pervading sexist stereotypes and shattering them to pieces. To my dismay, one of my first comments after the show was how unexpected and kick-ass her performance was. Afterwards, it got me wondering why that was. After all, why can’t a small, skinny girl that isn’t tatted up produce mind-blowingly good rock music? I mean, plenty of guys do that, so why can’t a girl, right? Although women have done a lot to break through the musical glass ceiling the past thirty years, realizations like these tend to show how much more they have to go.
You can check out the setlist from the concert as well as some more photos below. If you want to see the full set of pictures, head on over to my flickr page. Also, I threw in one of my favorite mp3s of hers for good measure and a live recording of “Dig a Pony” someone else took at the show.
I’ll start off with my favorite video posted by, as usual, Chris from GvB. I can’t come up with a better description than what’s given by the the artist’s Belgium label Crammed Discs:
The world has ended. All that’s left is a jungle on a floating rock where a paradise nightclub band is playing at the last cabaret on earth: the Las Vênus Resort Palace Hotel. The singer’s name is Sonja Khalecallon, and her band are Los Stroboscopious Luminous. Sonja Khalecallon is in fact one of the alter egos of Cibelle, the London-based tropical punkster whose take on music is entirely her own and “Lightworks” is her cover of seminal exotica producer and 1950s electronic music pioneer Raymond Scott’s track.
Videographer Ray Concepcioñ never ceases to amaze me. Evidently, I’m not the only one who’s captured by his cinematic talent as The Great Pumpkin included this video on an awesome recent post about Vermont’s folksy female group Mountain Man:
I seriously can’t get enough of this stripped down version of a new track entitled “Little Bright Fires” by West Texans Daniel Fluitt and Colt Miller of Thrift Store Cowboys (who you may remember put out one of my favorite 7′’s of ‘09). Take a listen for yourself and see how wonderful this song is:
Got to love the genius that is Michel Gondry. Here’s his latest music video for LA’s singer/songwriter Mia Doi Todd track “Open Your Heart”:
Words can’t not describe how pumped I am to check out St. Vincent this weekend when she plays Doug Fir Lounge. She had two great videos crop up this past week (the more official being her video for “Laughing With a Mouth Full of Blood” with Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein’s comic troupe Thunderant), however I prefer the cover of The National’s “Taken for Strangers”:
After hopping the pond for a handful of European dates, New Jersey native Dayve Hawk (aka Memory Tapes) finally got around to playing his first US show when he opened for Atlas Sound at Brooklyn’s Bell House this past week. Here’s a video of his rather nervous performance:
Finally, a video recap wouldn’t be complete with at least one Vincent Moon recording! This week’s pick is an early 2009 Montreal performance by recently deceased singer/songwriter Lhasa de Sela:
If these videos don’t take you through the weekend, head on over to my blog friend Adult Acid and check out what he has posted!
