Got a mega-edition of this week’s video round-up, so let’s just jump right in:
The first video is the official cut for the Swedish percussion duo Wildbirds & Peacedrums track “Bleed Like There Was No Other Flood” (via It’s A Trap). The beautiful visual projections match perfectly with the mysterious, if not all out dark, tone of the chorally-dense song:
Switching gears a bit, this mash-up between Weezy F. Baby and The Office is unbelievable (courtesy of Get Off the Coast). Once you get past the initial shock of hearing the two paired together, you find that the two actually work pretty damn well together:
Although I’ve been a bit mum about them on the blog, I’ve been spinning the blissful lo-fi pop songs of Brooklyn’s Beach Fossils a lot lately. Here’s a stellar video put together by Wooden Lens for their track “Window View” (via Delicious Scopitone):
Behind Sincerely Yours, I would say that Labrador Records is my second favorite Swedish label. They somehow have a knack for finding and signing bands that pump out a great variety of pop songs. The latest music video from one of their artists is this treat by the Mary Onettes entitled “The Night Before the Funeral”:
Nice to see the behemoths over at Pitchfork give some love to PT-Music favorites Memoryhouse. Here is their official music video for their beautiful bedroom pop song “Lately (Deuxieme)” as premiered on p4k’s .tv spin-off:
David Greenwald posted this amazing video on his Rawkblog of Dan Bejar (of Destroyer, New Pornos, Swan Lake fame) acoustically performing “The Freedom”. Take a listen:
In case you’ve been living in a cave, here is the official video for The National’s “Bloodbuzz Ohio” (via IGIF). Great stuff as usual…
To wrap-up this mega listing of videos, here is a brand spanking new track by Philly uncategorizable band Man Man as posted by Matt over at You Ain’t No Picasso. Soooo excited for this record to be released!
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.
