Carnival of souls: great videos from Scissor Sisters and Kanye West, Steel #1, more
* Even though I’ve embedded them both already over the past two days, I want to draw your attention to two extraordinary music videos.
* First up is “Invisible Light” by Scissor Sisters, directed by Nicolás Méndez. All I have to say here is “Paging Curt Purcell!” The period clothing and film stock and visual effects, the kinky aristo-satantic nudity and violence, the lurid editing and colors…it couldn’t be more Groovy Age of Horror if it were a Dunwich Horror/Devil Rides Out double feature. (Via Mike Barthel.)
* Next up is Kanye West’s half-hour long film “Runaway,” containing the song of the same name as well as many others from his recent release My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. It’s true, my experience with Kanye is odd in that I’d have a hard time humming you two bars from anything he’d done prior to this album other than “Gold Digger,” and his turn for the crazily tear-down-the-sky ambitious is what finally got my attention. I know he’s come in for some criticism over that, for being too self-consciously in pursuit of making a Grant Artistic Statement, but all I can say is that no one who puts his weird fixations on display like he does in this movie (which he directed!) is looking for anyone’s approval. This could well be my favorite film of the year.
2 Responses to Carnival of souls: great videos from Scissor Sisters and Kanye West, Steel #1, more
It’s funny that we hear the newLCD Soundsystem so differently: you say it’s paunchy and friendly, but I hear something tetchy, nervous and kind of nasty. It goes for a Bowie-in-Berlin vibe and it definitely succeeds – not just how the keyboards sound but the general air of grimy unpleasantness just under the sheen. It’s nowhere near as accessible as his previous records, it’s all minor-keys and a decidedly diminished range of hooks. It’s kind of a frustrated album, I think, on Murphy’s part – just my totally off-the-cuff armchair psychology, but it sounds rawer than usual.
And the “Heroes” pastiche? That’s a feature, not a bug, and the fact that he pulls it off is what impresses me every time I hear it. One of my top four or five tracks of the year, no doubt.
It’s funny that we hear the newLCD Soundsystem so differently: you say it’s paunchy and friendly, but I hear something tetchy, nervous and kind of nasty. It goes for a Bowie-in-Berlin vibe and it definitely succeeds – not just how the keyboards sound but the general air of grimy unpleasantness just under the sheen. It’s nowhere near as accessible as his previous records, it’s all minor-keys and a decidedly diminished range of hooks. It’s kind of a frustrated album, I think, on Murphy’s part – just my totally off-the-cuff armchair psychology, but it sounds rawer than usual.
And the “Heroes” pastiche? That’s a feature, not a bug, and the fact that he pulls it off is what impresses me every time I hear it. One of my top four or five tracks of the year, no doubt.
I disagree with almost every word of that.