Heartbreaking Bravery

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August 7, 2015

PWR BTTM – Ugly Cherries (Music Video)

PWR BTTM III

Now that the site’s been brought back up to speed on some of the week’s best songs and full streams, it’s time to turn an eye towards some genuinely great music videos. Roah Summit’s soft, dreamlike “Take Care” kicked off this week’s viewing necessities, shortly followed by Honduras’ lightly deranged “Paralyzed“, Girl Band’s deliriously unhinged “Paul“, Sunshine & The Blue Moon’s nostalgia-ready “Lucy“, and Nano Kino’s poised “Never Seemed To Happen“. Joining those titles were The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s frantic “The Ballad of Joe Buck“, Of Montreal’s animated adventure “Last Rites at the Jane Hotel“, Worriers’ self-effacing “Most Space“, and Foals’ visually stunning lyric clip for “A Knife In the Ocean“. While the feature could have gone to any one of those entries, it felt most appropriate to give it to PWR BTTM’s intentionally bold video for the title track off of their forthcoming record, Ugly Cherries.

PWR BTTM has surfaced an astonishing number of times as this site’s entered its Brooklyn-based era, something that was all but guaranteed a few songs into my first experience of the band’s exhilarating live show. Of course, it also helps that their focus on the area has intensified as of late (the duo recently announced plans to move to the city) and two DIY institutions (Father/Daughter and Miscreant) have both thrown their weight behind the band’s forthcoming record. A lot of that record has been evidenced through this site’s live coverage but the only official preview thus far has been “Ugly Cherries” itself, the record’s shamelessly, refreshingly bombastic title track.

For the video, the camera’s lens places the song’s guitarist/vocalist Benjamin Walter Hopkins front, center, and sidescreen. Almost immediately the viewer’s brought to confront Hopkins’ complete embrace of identity. Shots alternate and contrast the co-existing versions of Hopkins: the to-the-elevens glittery drag queen and the dressed-down lounger. Curiously, Hopkins’ bandmate Liv Bruce is all but absent throughout the video, though they’ve issued an assurance that this is intentional and that Bruce will be prominently featured in the band’s forthcoming clip. It’s a strange move because the duo’s collaborative partnership is one of PWR BTTM’s defining characteristics but eschewing that aspect does allow for the band’s presentation of gender identity to be thrown into a sharp focus on an individual level rather than presenting it as a combined effort (even though the two aren’t mutually exclusive).

Of course, this does nothing to detract from the actual music itself, which- as always- is a deeply felt, ridiculously impressive composition. The band’s commitment to both aesthetic and craft is allowed to thrive in the music video format and “Ugly Cherries” makes the most out of that opportunity right out of the gate. While it’ll definitely be interesting to see what’s in store as a companion piece (and going forward from there), it’s incredibly hard to argue against “Ugly Cherries” being representative of the band at their fiercest. Glamorous, unapologetic, hallucinatory, and surprisingly forceful, it’s both obviously compelling and a perfect way to make a statement. Fortunately, that statement’s left with a lot of room for expansion- something the band will undoubtedly capitalize on with no shortage of conviction and mischievous glee.

Watch “Ugly Cherries” below and pre-order the record from Father/Daughter and/or Miscreant ahead of its September 18 release.

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August 7, 2015

Meat Wave – Cosmic Zoo (Stream)

meatwave

While the vast majority of the week’s best songs found a home in the preceding posts, one of them deserved its own headline: Meat Wave’s “Cosmic Zoo”. For years now, Meat Wave have been a staple of my own personal listening habits. I was thrilled when they were the band that became the driving force behind Heartbreaking Bravery’s first showcase and their self-titled remains the only tape I’ve managed to wear thin (you can only listen to “Panopticon” so many times before it starts warping). Before diving too much further, though, a quick detour to cover the best full streams of the week-so-far seems warranted. Between inspired records from Lithuania, Sharkmuffin, and Wimps, it’s been a good week (not to mention just about everything streaming over at NPR’s First Listen). Now that we’ve got that out of the way, back to “Cosmic Zoo”.

Following the releases of “Erased“, “Sham King“, “NRA“, and “Delusion Moon“, “Cosmic Zoo” becomes the fifth preview of the band’s upcoming sophomore effort Delusion Moon (which comes on the heels of this year’s outstanding Brother EP). Appropriately, the song’s the fifth on Delusion Moon and has a lot of sway over Delusion Moon‘s building momentum. In the context of the record, it rockets that momentum to stratospheric heights. As a standalone single, it immediately conjures up a startling amount of energy and- over the course of a blistering three minutes- focuses that energy into a series of repeated blows, each hitting their mark with a startling ferocity. Whether it’s the riff that cuts everything to ribbons approximately 1/3rd of the way into the song (one of my favorite moments of music this year), the staccato outro, or the increasingly intense rhythm work of Joe Gac and Ryan Wizniak, it’s an unavoidable show of force.

While force alone would have made “Cosmic Zoo” a must-listen, it’s also headier than it initially seems. Tying into a structure that guitarist/vocalist Chris Sutter designed, it’s part of an overarching narrative that touches on motion sickness and the lunar cycles. Adding a venomous bite to what feels, increasingly, like deeply personal lyrical territory, “Cosmic Zoo” takes on the feel of a meteor, hurtling towards earth, hell-bent on destruction. Like Delusion Moon itself, “Cosmic Zoo” is a snarling tour de force that demonstrates the overwhelming bulk of Meat Wave’s strongest qualities. Brash, unavoidable, and just about perfect, it’s the kind of adrenaline jolt that’s strong enough to keep any week humming along.

Listen to “Cosmic Zoo” below and pre-order Delusion Moon from SideOneDummy ahead of its September 18 release date here. Underneath the embed, revisit a large portion of their set from our showcase.

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