Some Ugly As Well: The Good, The Bad and the Queen "The Good, The Bad and the Queen"

The Good, The Bad and the Queen "The Good, The Bad and the Queen"
dir. by Stephen Pook
The rising pulse of the music works wonderfully with the brilliantly edited film - splitting apart and turning psychedelic at just the right moment - but it's the content of the images which poses a problem in interpreting this video. On the one hand it seems the director intends to capture the mysterious and mesmerizing spirit of this Sufi religious gathering, using the spiritual experiences of these men to attribute some transcendent power to the music, and subsequently the video itself. Yet as one astute YouTube member so eloquently described it, it also comes off as "Hindu hippies rockin round the Beep man!!!"

The director needn't be concerned with correctly representing each person's religious affiliations (it is actually possible that these men are indeed Hindu, as some Hindus practice or incorporate Sufi traditions), but there does seem to be some problematic objectification of the "other" underlining the final product. Would this video work if the men weren't specifically pot-smoking brown-skinned people? The psychedlia of the finale seems to reference the surge in interest during the hippie movement of the 60's in Indian culture and religion. Yet it's a vague and superficial sort of interest - only by keeping the culture at a mysterious ("spiritual") distance can we sit back and enjoy observing these people as symbols or caricatures of the unknown.

In My White Tee: Travis "Selfish Jean"

Travis "Selfish Jean"
dir. by ?
A fresh take on the Dylan/Pennebaker model, though not quite as compelling as it could/should be. The funniest part is probably the way Demetri Martin is introduced - as an "international comedian" and far more pumped than when we last saw him. And I still swear The Man Who is a great album, even if I haven't listened to it since I was seventeen.

Angry Mob? Kaiser Chiefs "Everything Is Average Nowadays"

A distinctly passionless video about society's lack of creativity...


Kaiser Chiefs "Everything is Average Nowadays"
dir. by ?
Deep inside a desert bunker, somewhere near the set for "Ruby," mysteriously controlled machines produce art, weapons and individuality in massive assembly lines. Cameras are everywhere, capturing every moment of private inspiration in order to turn a mass public profit. From the creation of image to the commercialization of music, the Kaiser Chiefs criticize every aspect of culture for its banality and redundancy.

They're not oblivious to the irony of this move, since many critics find the band's music itself to be particularly banausic and derivative, and thus the final product manufactured is the Kaiser Chiefs themselves - just another britpop band. They are constantly watched by the media, and their success imitated by the labels in search of the next-big-thing. The director gets in on the self-referential humor as well, ending the video with a television set thrown out a window - apparently music videos are just as "average" as everything else.

There are some creative ideas working here, but the real problem is that the video is as blatant with its themes as the song. While the Kaiser Chiefs moan about mediocrity, the director shows it to us - the point is established within the first minute. The subsequent deluge of repetitive metaphors are run-of-the-mill (cheerleaders, jocks and punk rockers are standard punching bags in pop videos), and for a video which so clearly defines its ideas - in the end we are left with a surprising sense of blah.

Darkness Into Light: The Maccabees "Precious Time"

The Maccabees "Precious Time"
dir. by Sam Brady
The Maccabees "First Love" celebrated the strangeness of love as much as it lamented the pain of losing it. Here we find another focus on peculiar action, except this time it's the small things we do to pass the time - from a game of Guess Who? to throwing paper airplanes. With the help of creative animation and camera work, many of these seemingly mundane activities come alive in striking fashion. In this way the video gives weight to our imagination and the everydayness of life. Like the singer who asks his lover to slow down so they can enjoy themselves longer, the video will do any random thing in order to avoid the point - which is actually the point. It's from these small acts of creativity and leisure that we often derive the most palpable sense of happiness.

There Are Too Many Of Us

VIDEO OF THE WEEK




VIDEO: "Harrowdown Hill" by Thom Yorke

Much has been made about how the Internet has altered our conception of “truth,” at least in terms of newsworthy events. Twenty years ago if you wanted the facts about a war in the Middle East, all you had was the nightly news and whichever print publications chose to cover the event. Nowadays you have thousands of websites and blogs, multiple 24-hour news stations and the continued presence of print journalism searching for that same “truth.”

On some level Thom Yorke’s video for “Harrowdown Hill” is in support of this Internet phenomenon. The bird’s eye-view that most major news services attempt to give, meaning the general impression of an event, is almost always far too narrow and biased. Yorke and his director celebrate the individual voice amongst the crowd; every hand, every incident that helps create that view. It’s important to realize that in every creative product, every political movement - every moment - there are multiple stories and multiple angles.

Thus we get the blurred images from above the land, which at first almost seems like a miniature model world. But on closer inspection these landscapes are real, just seen through the lens of a generalized vision. The fear here is not that we miss the forest for the trees, but that we miss the dead body on a roof while admiring the vastness of a cityscape.

But while that man lays alone on a rooftop, protestors march through the streets below. There is something to be said for mass movement, and the power of banding together for a cause. The images of struggle are perhaps the most affecting in the video, with large groups of the oppressed fighting the “system.” But even in these cases you can’t help but focus on the particulars of the images; for instance the trampled body under the hooves of armed police.

There will always be a choice in what we hear, read, and see. It is perhaps impossible to ever truly both see the big picture and focus on the particular, but our vision of the general does directly influence the way in which we see the individual. I’m assuming when I see video of protesters, that the police are in the wrong, and thus the trampling of a body takes on certain significance for me. So if we take a closer look at that bird in the sky it looks a lot like a certain species of bird. Whether or not it is meant to be an eagle, and thus perhaps represent the United States, it is clear that Yorke and the director are commenting on the current war with the deluge of images of resisting authority. It is amongst this sea of violence that the individual voice and individual pain are lost, as Yorke struggles beneath the water to find some truth. The artist or anyone attempting to express uniqueness drowns amidst the colossal effects of war, and the collective nationalistic ideology behind it.

Yorke laments, “I can’t take the pressure/ no one cares if you live or die,” and it’s a sentiment that seems to become especially true in times of war. But the final images of the vastness of our world also draw that conclusion out of its limited context. Because in a sense, amidst the sea of humanity and the sea of natural beauty, won’t the individual voice always drown? It’s thus the responsibility of the artist to resist that, and the responsibility of all people to search for those unique, individual perspectives on life.

The “truth” remains elusive, but the more voices we hear the closer we get.

(this esssay was also posted on Blogcritics.org, a site that Obtusity recently joined consisting of a collection of the best bloggers on the internet)

Fighting The Shadows

On their debut album, Through the Windowpane, the Guillemots toil in the darkness only to further illuminate the joys of the sun. And in those moments when they soar past Icarus and touch fire - they are a band to behold, reaching heights unheard of in modern pop precisely because of the time spent in the cellars.

Sumptuous strings and subdued melancholic keys punctuate a striking opening for the Guillemots in “Little Bear” where lead singer Fyfe Dangerfield waxes Buckley and declares, “I’m going beneath the stars/I’m going under the soil again/And I won’t be back in a long time.” As he descends into thought the strings grow dark and horrific, the last ten seconds leaving an ominous feeling of anticipation.

But as soon as that feeling settles, a completely new one emerges on track two. “Madeup Lovesong #43” is a deceptively simple ballad, expounding on the simple motivational power of love while breathing through a strange landscape of echoing brit-pop guitars and epic drums. The singer begins in a seeming state of unrequited love, “I love you, I don’t think you care.” But it’s in the final act that Dangerfield lets his guard down, screams like a madman ala Jim James on “Wordless Chorus,” and overcomes his skepticism, “I can’t believe you care!” becomes his triumphant battle cry.

“Trains to Brazil,” like “Made Up Love Song,” has appeared on previous EP’s but it is within this context that it garners its’ true power. Musically it’s the most exciting song of the year this side of “In the Morning” (Junior Boys); combining the jazz impulses of the group with David Byrne yelps and pounding toe-tapping drums - emerging as a thunderbolt of ache, bliss and pure emotion.

Here Dangerfield speaks to his own frustrated impulses, “I wonder why we bother at all,” after he loses a love to “erroneous fools.” Yet further on in the record, on “Blue Would Still Be Blue,” he laments, “I waste so much time thinking about time, I should be out there claiming what’s mine.” Here we are presented with nothing but a stripped keyboard melody to accompany Dangerfield’s high wire vocal acrobatics; we understand the self-doubt at play in the center of this record. The singer himself is in fact one who moans his life “from one day to the next,” but he is also one who celebrates it. It would be naïve to just “live and be thankful,” as Dangerfield himself puts it here. “One day I could die, just like I was born, and the split in the middle is what I’m here for, and I just want to fill it all with joy.”

The album teeters between despair and hope in a painstakingly balanced manner, “shadows on the windowpane” turn into “love coming through my windowpane” from song to song. “We’re Here” wants to imagine the arrival of our trains in brazil on magic carpets and perfect love, but album closer “Sao Paulo” ends crushingly depressed with Dangerfield spiting the world and himself, content to toil in the underground once more – or just leave altogether.

It’s the promise of the world still unseen that continually brings Dangerfield and co. out of this hole, the hope that the light felt in the distance might illuminate something beautiful in their presence or bring some warmth to their bodies. And yet to end on such a somber note is a statement of realism that makes Through the Windowpane so affecting, it offers no solutions but as Dangerfield sings on “We’re Here,” it’s simply an expression of “joy and pain fighting in the corridors.”

www.guillemots.com
www.myspace.com/guillemotsmusic