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: Bombadil, The Avett Brothers, El Perro del Mar, and Charlotte Gainsbourg (with Beck!).

A Carolina two-fer begins the latest installment in our on-going "Video/age" series, with upstarts Bombadil representing the collegial burg of Durham, and Rick Rubin-produced superstars The Avett Brothers coming to us out of Concord a couple of hundred miles or so to the southwest (though truth be told it probably seems like a lot more). Anyway, Bombadil's first ever music video is a valuable lesson in using what's available and repurposing that material to make it work for you in brand new way. Sort of a second cycle of existence, a re-cycle, if you will. For their song "So Many Ways to Die," the band used all public domain footage to demonstrate, possibly because scenes from Harold & Maude would have been too expensive. In any case, it all works well with the band's rustic persona.

The Avetts, meanwhile, team with director Jody Hill (Eastbound and Down, Observe and Report) for a surreal trip to the world of The American Budget Shopping Network, a hopefully fictitious (though far too close to real for comfort) television proprieter of....crap, more or less. Except in this case, in which the host breathlessly tells us that "this is one of the most exciting projects (he's) ever had the opportunity to bring you." He's speaking about a new Avett Brothers record-- in this bizarro world, complete with generic cover art and "only $9.95 on vinyl and cassette." One of the few truly rocking moments on the band's actual latest release, I and Love and You, "Slight Figure of Speech," doesn't take long to bring TABSN down to the depths of chaos, what with its rock & roll and all.

Next up, something completely different (and SFW for most W-spaces). Director Filip Nilsson dreamed up this idea for El Perro del Mar's "Change of Heart," easily one of my favorite songs of the year. As the director himself puts it: "Such a brilliant track needed a certain visual treatment." Apparently, he found that treatment in the form of Hungarians Sandor Vlah and Gyula Takaes, aka The Golden Power (A quick aside, I'm pretty sure I saw these guys perform during the halftime of the Blazers/Celtics game last year. You can probably imagine how that went over). It's an impressive display of strength and agility the duo puts on, all in a deliberate speed that matches the track perfectly. Stay golden!

Finally, something from THE FUTURE, as in 2010. Charlotte Gainsbourg's upcoming release IRM is out January 26th and of extra note is produced by none other than Beck. Here's Gainsbourg avec Beck on "Heaven Can Wait," an endlessly watchable collection of scenes that are somehow identifiable or familiar, all including something that renders that familiar....off. Keith Schofield, he of that little "Toe Jam" gem (SFW, probably, again depending on your W), directed, and he scores bonus point along the way for his inclusion of breakdancing, half-beards, Fruity Pebbles, and the underrated sport of melonball (among other things).

Video/age, previously...