The members of Wood Chickens have been playing in various Wisconsin punk bands for several years so it makes sense that they’d sound as cohesive as they did right out of the gate. Combining a strong punk influence with an irrepressible roots influence, the band’s quickly gained a reputation as one of the state’s most exhilarating acts, both live and on record. On Saturday, March 18 they’ll be playing Kitch As Kitsch Can V, the fifth annual fest put on by Kitschy Manitou records. Before that, though, they’re unleashing the video for “Skunk Ape” on the world, which serves as both the title track for their just-released 7″ and as the lead-off single for their forthcoming full-length, Countrycide.
A kick-down, drag-out, country-fried punk missive, “Skunk Ape” finds the band operating in fine form and, with the accompanying music video, toying with some appropriately woodsy mythos that’s driven by a Sasquatch-like creature (which constitutes the narrative that drives the Skunk Ape 7″). The “Skunk Ape” clip’s as rough-hewn and energizing as the band’s music, which remains an off-kilter, ramshackle force. It’s a testament to DIY sensibilities and it nicely underlines the tenacity running through Wood Chickens’ music at seemingly every turn. More than just a great video, it’s a definitive portrait of a great emerging band.
Watch “Skunk Ape” below and pick up Skunk Ape from Kitschy Manitou here. .
It’s been a while since anything’s run on this site but, as always, everything that’s being put on the table is being assessed and evaluated. A Year’s Worth of Memories‘ third edition is just around the corner but before those recollections begin, it only seems fair to take a look back at the best of what 2016 had to offer. This will be the first year where a numerical rankings system is abandoned, a decision that wasn’t made lightly but is being enforced for a variety of reasons specific to this over-stuffed year (meaning that the numerical rankings system may appear again roughly 12 months from now).
For whatever reason, music videos are largely viewed by the general public as having fallen out of favor, which is a genuine shame considering what’s being done with the form. Lemonade seemed to revive some interest and open up potential possibilities for the future but it’s still a format that the public’s left by the wayside. Here at Heartbreaking Bravery, the best of these have been traditionally celebrated because they represent the perfect marriage of music and film. 2016 presented a whole new slate of incredible material, headlined by an unbelievable string of videos from Minor Victories and PUP, that were worth praising.
Here are 16 of the best clips to have appeared throughout the year.
Kevin Morby – Dorothy
Christopher Good has directed a handful of videos that have been featured on this site over the years but may have turned in a career best with Kevin Morby’s “Dorothy“. Embracing Morby’s open road aesthetics, Good allows “Dorothy” to gracefully coast along at a breezy pace, infusing it with an inordinate amount of perfect cues and tongue-in-cheek humor. It’s sublime craftsmanship that not only complements but elevates its already-great source material.
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Courtney Barnett – Elevator Operator
After cracking last year’s music video list with the jaw-dropping clip for “Kim’s Caravan”, Courtney Barnett makes another appearance thanks to the fascinating, cameo-heavy video for “Elevator Operator“. Blending Barnett’s signature wit with a staggering moment of quiet existentialism that arrives out of nowhere, “Elevator Operator” sees the celebrated songwriter aiming for new heights and reaching a stratospheric level.
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John K. Samson – Postdoc Blues
Former Weakerthans bandleader John K. Samson made an incredibly welcome return with 2016’s outstanding Winter Wheat. One of that record’s highlights, “Postdoc Blues“, received the music video treatment and is the rare clip that benefits from an incredibly direct and literal simplicity. Created for a good cause and executed to a characteristically unassuming brand of perfection, “Postdoc Blues” is a breath of fresh air.
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Parquet Courts – Human Performance
No music video from 2016 proved to be more grotesquely haunting than Parquet Courts‘ oddly disturbed, puppet-driven clip for “Human Performance“. It’s intensely human, ridiculously unnerving, and extremely hard to shake. “Human Performance” props up its own ugliness in an effectively defiant act of genuinely brave showmanship. A singular piece from a fascinating directorial voice, “Human Performance” wound up as one of 2016’s most fascinating moments.
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Cymbals Eat Guitars – 4th of July, Philadelphia (SANDY)
Easily one of 2016’s best songs, Cymbals Eat Guitars‘ “4th of July, Philadelphia (SANDY)” also served as one of the year’s best music videos. Shot through with nostalgia and an abundance of feeling, “4th of July, Philadelphia (SANDY)” managed the impossible task of both referencing an indisputable classic and standing on its own. A perfect marriage of lyric video and traditional music video, Cymbals Eat Guitars may have created something bordering on timeless.
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LVL UP – The Closing Door
The first major music video effort from LVL UP came courtesy of House of Nod, who were given the unenviable task of capturing the searing spiritual search present all throughout the band’s latest effort, Return to Love, and turned in an absolute gem. “The Closing Door” relies heavily on imagery and metaphor but never seems anything less than grounded. “The Closing Door” climaxes in a beautiful final sequence that’s moving, hopeful, and reassuring, three things that become sorely necessary in a difficult year.
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Potty Mouth – Smash Hit
There are a lot of ways a music video can achieve greatness, whether it be through breathtaking visuals, inspired direction, a memorable concept, by complementing the song, or, in the case of Potty Mouth‘s “Smash Hit“, being astonishingly representative of the band. An effective mix of glitz, glamour, and grit, “Smash Hit” finds the trio vamping for the cameras and giving a tenacious central performance. It’s an exhilarating burst from a band that’s attained an assured confidence.
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Vagabon – The Embers
“The Embers” served as site favorites Vagabon‘s introduction-at-large for a sizable audience and it’s one hell of an introduction. Utilizing a visual style that’s not too distant from Destin Daniel Cretton’s Short Term 12(one of the best films of this young century), “The Embers” is immediately gripping. The empowering, symbolism-heavy narrative is as striking as the imagery and all of it clicks into something that verges on the transcendental. In short: it’s unmissable.
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Japanese Breakfast – Everybody Wants to Love You
Another clip from the inimitable House of Nod, Japanese Breakfast‘s “Everybody Wants to Love You” popped up on many of these year-end music video lists and it’s incredibly easy to see why. A celebration of heritage and individuality as well as a moving tribute to a deceased parent, “Everybody Wants to Love You” is loaded with sincerity and meaning. Vibrant with the faintest touch of melancholy, it’s an unforgettable demonstration of personal strength and unerring resolve.
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Dilly Dally – Snakehead
Likely the funniest music video to be released in 2016, Dilly Dally‘s “Snakehead” music video skewers its own format at every turn, while clearly being a meticulously crafted clip born out of a deep love and understanding of music videos. Biting captions, self-aware performances, and contextual knowledge make “Snakehead” obscenely endearing and skyrocket its worth in the process. Pointed, snarky, and a hell of a lot of fun, “Snakehead” is nothing less than a knockout.
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PWR BTTM – West Texas
2016 was a very kind year for PWR BTTM and one of the duo’s opening shots was the sweeping music video for “West Texas”. Epic in scope and unapologetic in its cinematic debt, “West Texas” is a swaggering blast of bravado that touches on just about everything that’s made PWR BTTM so beloved in such a short amount of time. The identity politics, the showmanship, the willingness to be subversive, and the ability to string everything together with fiendishly sly, self-aware humor.
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Hazel English – Never Going Home
Hazel English delivered one of the year’s best EP’s with the exceedingly lovely Never Going Home, which boasted a title track that received an absolutely gorgeous visual accompaniment. While the lyric video for “I’m Fine“, the studio clip for “It’s Not Real“, and the clip for “Control” all merited individual consideration for this list, it was the soft lensing and natural, delicate charm of “Never Going Home” that made the deepest impression. It casts a spell that’s worthy of a complete surrender.
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Mitski – Happy
Part of a trio of impressive Mitski clips (including “Your Best American Girl” and “A Burning Hill“), “Happy” packed a powerful enough punch to secure the spot on this list. Paying homage to heritage, race relations, historical tension, military occupation, and a bevvy of classic films, Maegan Houang brings a fiery directorial touch to an outstanding concept and executes with staggering purpose. By the time “Happy” winds to an end, it’s difficult to wish for anything other than an expansion into a feature length film.
Only one band could rival what Minor Victories achieved in the music video format in 2016 (but we’ll get to that band in a moment). Minor Victories aggressively established an arresting visual aesthetic and turned in an incredible number of clips that could have very easily wound up in this spot. “Cogs“, “Folk Arp“, “Scattered Ashes (Song for Richard)“, “A Hundred Ropes“, “Breaking My Light“, and “Give Up the Ghost (Orchestral Variation)” were all gripping in various ways, making the most of crisp black-and-white cinematography. Their finest moment, however, came with the release of “Cogs (Orchestral Variation)“, an expansive, intimate character study and the band’s most ambitious offering to date. It’s harrowing, it’s riveting, and it’s easily one of the best clips of 2016.
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MUSIC VIDEO OF THE YEAR
PUP – Sleep in the Heat
In 2013, PUP‘s “Reservoir” topped the year-end music video list I contributed to PopMatters. In 2014, PUP’s “Guilt Trip” topped this site’s very first year-end music videos list. In 2015, PUP managed to crack the year-end music video list once again with “Dark Days“. This year, the band continued an unprecedented run of dominance in the format with no less than three legitimate year-end contenders, each wildly different from the other.
From the playful, game-happy lyric clip for “DVP” to the relentless shock-and-awe brutality of the terrifyingly-named “If This Tour Doesn’t Kill You, I Will“, the band was firing on all cylinders. Still, none of that could’ve been adequate preparation for what they and director Jeremy Schaulin-Rioux achieved with “Sleep in the Heat”, a successor to “Guilt Trip” that came several years after filming on “Guilt Trip” wrapped- and after “Guilt Trip” star Finn Wolfhard landed another lucrative starring role in Netflix’s Stranger Things.
Just as “If This Tour Doesn’t Kill You, I Will” intercut footage of “Reservoir” to establish a sense of history to ground its narrative and supply additional meaning, “Sleep in the Heat” opens with the startlingly vivid footage of its natural predecessor. The actors that were assembled in “Guilt Trip” resume their posts as stand-in’s for PUP’s members in their earlier days and each of them — particularly Wolfhard, who turns in what’s easily the best work of his burgeoning career in this clip — give committed performances.
Taking on the role of a scrappy touring band, the young cast find themselves navigating the frequently dire circumstances that are all too familiar to anyone that’s ever hopped in a van to drive four hours to play a show in a basement to five people. There’s a sense of lived-in realism that bolsters everything in the clip, which seeps in from the onset and never relinquishes its hold. Early on, “Sleep in the Heat” takes a curious turn when a stray dog takes a shining to the band’s food and follows them to their next brief stop, endearing itself to the band to the point where they bring it on board as a rescue.
Here’s where the narrative crux of “Sleep in the Heat” — a song written about guitarist/vocalist Stefan Babcock’s deceased chameleon — begins to sink in and all anyone can do is prepare for devastation. Not too long after that sudden, sinking realization, things in the video begin to get bleak. The dog gets sick and needs a surgical procedure, unable to cover the expense, Wolfhard (as the young Babcock) pawns a guitar mid-tour to provide for the animal that’s quickly become a new best friend. The surgery goes forward but it isn’t enough.
In one of the most emotionally shattering music video montages of recent memory, the band members of PUP are photographed holding their own deceased pets, lending a heartbreaking reality to an already emotionally charged clip. Several stages of the process of dealing with death all collide at once and it’s a forceful, resonant moment that immediately registers as singular.
As brilliant as that moment is, it’s not until the final passage where everything’s really driven home. Wolfhard’s back to the front of the band, guitar slung across his body once more (a perfect shot revealing he’d broken through the pawn shop glass to steal it back is just one of many grace notes scattered throughout the clip), looking delirious, hollow, and broken as footage of the wounded dog being tended to is intercut with Wolfhard overcome with emotion while screaming the song’s final chorus: Yesterday I went back to my apartment to see how you’d been holding up, you hadn’t been eating, I thought you were sleeping but you’re not waking up. I want you to know that I’d spend every bit of my pitiful savings and loans just to see you again… but I know Iwon’t.
The screen fades to black and resumes after a brief pause only to reveal rocks being piled on top of a freshly-dug patch of dirt. The camera pulls back and reveals one word, spray painted on the rock pile’s surface: PUP. Another pause and another cut to black occurs before “Sleep in the Heat” offers one final nod to its prequel and closes with a shot of the van moving forward down an open road, looking ahead to new triumphs, heartbreak, and everything else life has to offer.
After a brief hiatus, coverage on Heartbreaking Bravery is resuming with a quick post, a small handful of year-end lists, and the return of A Year’s Worth of Memories. To start, the focus will be on clips; Ratboys, Men I Trust, PINS, Bloody Death Skull, and Moby & The Void Pacific Choir all put out great videos at the tail end of 2016 but the latest from Chick Quest proved to be a genuine standout.
A simple, direct clip, for a simple, direct song “Savant Garde” somehow manages to pack a surprising amount of punch. Each of the band members mime their parts and dance in front of an empty club’s brick wall (and, in the case of a sizable portion of the vocals, a red curtain). The premise is simple but the execution is sublime. There’s a tension that the track drums up which the video capitalizes on by subtly emphasizing its empty spaces. It’s a brilliant touch and it elevates “Savant Garde” considerably. Easily a career highlight for the band, the clip they’ve provided does it justice.
Watch “Savant Garde” below and keep an eye on this site for more details on their forthcoming record.
Six weeks is a long time to go without posting an individual feature piece on a music video (discounting premieres). With the end of the year fast approaching, it’s not surprising that many of the clips that have come out in the time this site’s been on a relative hiatus, there have been a handful of the format’s best entries for the 2016 crop. PUP maintained their unrelenting stranglehold on an obscene level of excellence with the most emotionally affecting clip of a ridiculously impressive filmography, Vagabon emerged with a galvanizing sense of renewed purpose, Emilyn Brodsky continued to do wonders with stop motion, Tenement continued to further their own distinct identity in the visual arts department, The Seams offered up a double dose of refined hyper-editing, and everyone else found a way to rise above their contemporaries to create indelible pieces of art worth celebrating. So, below, dive in and get comfortable with the best 25 clips of the past six weeks.
Additional note: Trace Mountains’ excellent clip for “Bring the Mountain to Me” wasn’t available on YouTube and couldn’t be included in the below mix. Make sure to give that one a watch as well.
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1. PUP – Sleep in the Heat 2. Meat Wave – The Incessant 3. Stove – Blank 4. The Seams – Remembrance Day 5. Holy Tunics – Forget Your Love 6. Julia Jacklin – Don’t Let the Kids Win 7. Vagabon – The Embers 8. Hellrazor – Raise Your Rifle 9. Lazertits – Boss Bitch 10. Slothrust – Rotten Pumpkin 11. Vacation – Every Direction 12. The Raveonettes – Fast Food 13. Poppies – Told 14. WHOOP-Szo – Another Show 15. Bruising – I Don’t Mind 16. Sløtface – Bright Lights 17. Tim Darcy – Tall Glass of Water 18. Self Talk – Untitled 19. Petal – Chandelier 20. Tenement – Hive of Hives 21. Stef Chura – Spotted Gold 22. Fred Thomas – Voiceover 23. Emilyn Brodsky – Hands Off the Stove 24. The Seams – Seeds 25. MOURN – Irrational Friend
As the year-end list slate of material approaches, this publication (and many others) have a tendency to get backed up. Being run by a single person puts Heartbreaking Bravery at a greater disadvantage in those terms. Other mitigating life factors have proven to be fairly significant in terms of time allotment. However, no matter how many things there wind up being to balance, keeping up with the latest releases never gets neglected. While there are a handful of tracks, music videos, and full streams that will be receiving (likely brief) individual features, there are many others that have recently emerged which deserve celebration. Those can all be accessed below, split into each respective category. Enjoy.
“My grandfather is a Lutheran preacher. I remember the first time I understood that this meant that Grandpa sounded, behaved, and even looked different in front of a congregation than he did with his family at the dinner table. ‘In Water’ is a song about identity construction. It’s about the way that we create, destruct, and recreate ourselves from minute to minute to fit our environment.”
In a lot of press releases, the given quotes are airy, pretentious, or designed to subvert expectations (or realities). The above quote proves to be deeply important to understanding the first glimpse into the world of Good Night Gold Dust‘s bandleader Laura Schultz’s new solo project, Kielo. The subdued, ambient, and slightly unsettling clip for Kielo’s “In Water” touches directly on the themes of identity construction, deconstruction, re-construction, and the way those are shaped by environment in startlingly direct ways.
Utilizing landscape shots, superimposed imagery, grainy aesthetics, projections, and a series of low-grade effects, the team responsible for the creation of “In Water” — which includes Schultz’s Good Night Gold Dust bandmate Colin Scharf and art director Katie O’Connor) conjures up an elegant, hazy, atmosphere with an immediately recognizable line to the upper Midwest’s wintry sensibilities. Even in small ways, the clip’s an unapologetic mirror of the song’s thesis.
Packaged all together, “In Water” transcends its humble components to become something that’s not only memorable but surprisingly moving. Schultz’s vocals and the ambient textures that shape “In Water” are a breathtaking pairing, rendering the track a stunning introduction to what’s promising to be a very worthwhile project. If the rest of Kielo’s work can measure up to “In Water”, Schultz may just have a shot at securing national attention. Don’t make the mistake of missing out.
Watch “In Water” below and keep an eye on this site for more news on Kielo.
November was a hectic month for a lot of reasons, politically and personally. Barely any posts ran over the past 30 days but, as always, the new releases were accounted for as they were unveiled. As December presses towards 2017, there will be a slew of new posts covering the best material to be released in November as well as the releases that appear throughout the month. Before those run, though, there’ll be extended recaps of some of the most exceptional releases in the three major categories (streams, music videos, and full streams). This post will cover the visual end of that spectrum and offers up a wide array of styles. Go exploring.
For the past few years, this site’s paid close to attention to the work being done by Kindling, one of the more promising names in the new wave of shoegaze acts that have been releasing exceptional music. Stephen Pierce, one of the band’s guitarist/vocalists, has emerged as a source of inspiration in those times. Overcoming injury and contributing to items that aimed to make a positive change. Character is often reflected in music so it’s no surprise that Kindling’s has always been both reassuring and incredibly tantalizing.
The band released an outstanding full-length entitled Everywhere Else just a handful of months ago and are releasing an appropriately retro-minded clip for one of the record’s highlights, “Black Eye”. Using hazy overlays and strange coloration, the band invokes memories of a variety of classic ’90s clips from shoegaze, grunge, and downer punk acts. Fittingly, the visual approach also speaks to the narrative of “Black Eye”, which is driven by feelings of alienation and despair.
That sense of sadness permeates through every frame of “Black Eye”, even as the Alle Kern-directed clip eventually settles into determined resilience. “Black Eye” is a smoky, nostalgic, emotional gut-punch that never feels its length. Kindling’s constantly in the center of the tornado that’s perpetually swirling around them and the clip somehow illustrates, at least in part, how at home they are in those surroundings. Incredibly compelling and even a little thought-provoking, “Black Eye” is the band at their best. Why take shelter when you could get swept up in the fray?
Watch “Black Eye” below and pick up Everywhere Else here.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This series of posts reflects back on some of the best material to be released over the past few weeks. Each post with this heading is a part of this series. After this series has concluded regular coverage will resume.
House of Nod Productions has earned a lot of praise from this site in the past and their incredible winning streak continues with their latest effort: a rapidly-paced clip for Bellows‘ outstanding “Thick Skin”. One of the many highlights that comprise the Oliver Kalb-led project’s most recent release, Fist & Palm, “Thick Skin” gains even more strenght in its incredible visual presentation.
Combining time lapses, archival footage of nature, nods to the French New Age movement, live captures, and some ridiculously impressive Edgar Wright-esque hyper-editing, the Rob Kolodny-directed clip underscores the swirling, colorful aspects that define Fist & Palm, Bellows’ most exceptional work to date. It’s been a monumental year for the project, which saw their visibility steadily increasing (and included a very gracious contribution to the A Step Forwardcompilation that marked this site’s 1000th post) and the project’s sound growing increasingly more refined.
“Thick Skin” capitalizes on that chaos with an extremely acute accuracy while still managing to ground the proceedings enough to keep the clip strangely relatable. “Thick Skin” is a constantly shifting whirlwind that never loses a sense of overwhelming poetry, even as it continuously expands outward. Maintaining a remarkably consistent tonality through something that relies that heavy on extremely varied imagery is no easy feat but Kolodny continues to make it seem effortless, coaxing an impressive amount of magic out of an enchanting tapestry.
Watch “Thick Skin” below and pick up a copy of Fist & Palm from Double Double Whammy here.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This series of posts reflects back on some of the best material to be released over the past few weeks. Each post with this heading is a part of this series. After this series has concluded regular coverage will resume.
No band this year has managed to string together a run of music videos more astonishing than Minor Victories. “Cogs” and “Folk Arp” both earned featured slots on this site while “Scattered Ashes (Song for Richard)” and “A Hundred Ropes” both appeared in collective round-ups that covered two specific stretches of time. All four of those clips came laced with an electrifying intensity that the band presented in different ways.
“Cogs”, arguably, was the most effective in establishing that intensity, tracking a man fleeing a hooded figure wielding a rifle in a patch of woods. Tension-fueled and riveting beyond measure, the prospect of a follow-up act would’ve been daunting in the hands of less capable filmmakers. In “Cogs (Orchestral Version)”, the concept present in “Cogs” is flipped on its head, as the narrative focal point becomes a murderer coming to grips with his actions.
“Cogs (Orchestral Version)” is part of an upcoming record entitled Orchestral Variations that presents orchestral interpretations of the songs on the band’s impressive self-titled debut. The conceit that lays the foundation for the record taps into an emotive core that winds up emboldening the visuals of “Cogs (Orchestral Version)”, which is the most expansive of the band’s videos to date.
There’s a bleak, daunting story that’s painted in several exquisitely lensed black-and-white frames, capitalizing on the band’s penchant for vivid imagery and meticulous detail. Virtually every shot in “Cogs (Orchestral Version)” is gorgeous and the pain present in the central character becomes increasingly unbearable as the clip asks us to examine, scrutinize, and even empathize with a monster. It’s absorbing, disturbing, and shockingly effective. It’s also one of the best music videos of the year.
Watch “Cogs (Orchestral Version)” below and keep an eye on this site for more information regarding Orchestral Variations.
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