Regardless of how great a song is, I really need a video to grab my attention visually within a few seconds, or it’s not going to get in this here column. “Blank Stare,” by a band called Solids, won me over with its first images of tiny red and yellow houses, contrasted against a blindingly blue lake and an aggressively orange mountain range, which made my eyes almost start watering just from the sheer brightness of the colors. Because, acid. Continue reading Video Clip of The Week: Solids, “Blank Stare”
Tag Archives: Bob Mould
Video Clip of The Week: Creepoid, “Dried Out”
Wow! When was the last time you heard somebody compare a current rock tune to a track from Bob Mould’s 1994 masterpiece, File Under: Easy Listening (recorded with his band Sugar), or an infinitely less dreary version of Nirvana’s “Heart Shaped Box”? Never? Yeah, probably. And yet, that is what we most want to convey about this week’s featured Video Clip, Creepoid’s “Dried Out,” off the band’s new album Cemetery Highrise Slum (what a great title!), which was just released on Collect Records. And that is high praise indeed.
The band explains that the video “was filmed the day after the last show of our US tour this Spring with A Place To Bury Strangers.” The Mitchell Wojcik-directed clip was shot on location at California’s Salton Sea (an enigmatic place of myth and legend if there ever was one) and features Kurt Heasley of Lilys playing a prominent role.
Maybe we’ve watched too much Breaking Bad, but what we can’t help but think of every time we see footage taking place in an arid, desert-like landscape are those scenes of Walt and Jessie meeting up with Gus and his various malevolent henchmen in a trailer out in the middle of nowhere. Much like those tenuous negotiations, the story told in this video doesn’t end well for anybody involved.
Find Creepoid’s US summer tour dates listed below. Enjoy!
Creepoid photo by Jammi York
Video Clip of The Week: Minor Alps, “I Don’t Know What To Do With My Hands”
Confession: the primary reason I started this Video Clip of the Week series several months back is because I needed an excuse to force myself to write about new music. Pop music has reached an absolute nadir to the point where I’m 1000 times more excited to write about Food these day than I am to even listen to any new band. And that’s just a shame.
So, nobody was more surprised than me to discover a new group comprised of seasoned musicians who, rather than harnessing a retread, have dug deeply into their roots to unearth a vibrant-yet-comfortingly-retro sound. Minor Alps is the collaborative vision of Juliana Hatfield and Paddle Board Mania Matthew Caws; two songwriting-based, music industry veterans who helped to blaze the trail for what became Alternative Rock Music back when Nirvana was still in its infancy. This week’s featured Video Clip is the duo’s “I Don’t Know What To Do With My Hands,” the latest single off their debut album, Get There (just released October 29th, 2013 on Barsuk Records).
With a refreshing and understated, artsy video directed by Animator/Musician Clyde Petersen “I Don’t Know What To Do With My Hands” is a remarkably strong track that harkens back to a time before American Idol, Emo and Autotune ruined 99.9% of all pop music. Caws’ guitar playing is as original and compelling as anything on a 90s-era Bob Mould record, while the 20 intervening years since Hatfield fronted The Blake Babies has allowed her vocals to mature into a rich and sweet aural nectar with just enough bite in it to favorably recall The B52s’ Cindy Wilson.
Minor Alps will be on tour across the US during the month of November. Enjoy!
Juliana Hatfield and Matthew Caws are Minor Alps