Music Blog

Maybe you haven't noticed, but it's the golden age of music video all over again. Once left to the likes of big budgets, Top 40 and MTV, indie musicians are teaming with burgeoning auteurs to create a new wave of DIY audio/visual splendor. This week's edition: Ramona Falls, Grand Archives, Bishop Allen and Spiral Stairs.

The second installment of our new A/V series-- extra emphasis on the V-- includes new videos featuring both the animated (one intricately, one generally) and the non-animated, the narrative-based and the less linear. All tend to work well, as we'll see, in their varying ways, adding memorable-- sometimes humorous, sometimes moving-- twists where least expected. Let's watch....

We'll start local with what is easily the most visually stunning of this group. Ramona Falls is the side project from Menomena's Brent Knopf, the debut Intuit having dropped in October. Given those facts, it comes as no surprise that Stefan Nadelman-- the same man behind the stunning video for Menomena's "Evil Bee"-- also fills that role for Ramona Falls' "I Say Fever." Nadelman employs old west and animal imagery to impart a morality tale of sorts, not necessarily suggested by the song, but not not suggested either. It's the vibe that's important.

On the other side of the animation spectrum-- that perhaps being the barely animated-- sits this video for Grand Archives' "Oslo Novelist." Far from being a failure, this was the clear intention of director Marcy Stone-Francois and she succeeds with little, coming down squarely in the territory of "spaced out South Park." This seems far more entertaining than what may have been: a day in the life of an onery, gray-suited Norwegian-- tortoise-shell-rim-bespectacled, pale-lipped and with a stifling case of writer's block. Oh by the way, Grand Archives' second album, Keep In Mind Frankenstein, came out recently on Sub Pop.

If you're old enough, you might remember the last gasps of American Bandstand, itself the last gasp (and most famous example) of that odd sub-genre of television show that featured young people dancing to popular music of the day and pop stars lip-syncing their songs (Soul Train comes to mind, too). Not sure why those went away. In any case, Bishop Allen's Randy Bell-directed video for their "True or False" plays out as a kind of homage to those types of programs, particularly the early variety (hence the black and white). It even includes a lip-synced performance from the band's Darbie Nowatka Rice, who takes a rare lead vocal turn on the song, found on this year's Grr.... Bishop Allen returns to Portland this weekend: Sunday at the Doug Fir.

Finally, we close with the most linear and narrative of these selections, a video arguably cut from the same mold as notables like "Hungry Like the Wolf," "Take On Me," and "Papa Don't Preach," (hey look, Danny Aiello!) among many others. How proud would Scott Kannberg (aka Spiral Stairs) be to see his video for "Cold Change"-- directed by Jess Carfield-- mentioned in such heady company? Before you watch, however, please note that the protagonist, if you want to call him that, is fictional and any similarities to Portlanders living or dead is entirely coincidental. Ultimately, this is about finding release, any release, and it arrives through the kind of unexpected denouement that can make this type of video so satisfying. The circumstances haven't changed for our rock n' roll waiter friend-- and if you don't begin somewhere in the midst of this to start pulling for the guy, you're probably not a nice person-- but maybe his perception of those circumstances has. The former and soon to be once again Pavement member Kannberg/Spiral Stairs' new album is called The Real Feel.

Video/age, previously...