John Mayer exploits a crazy Floridian, Cher is still trying to be sexy, Okkervil River pay homage to a historic building from their stomping’ grounds and more as artists continue to astound us with new ways in which to scroll sentiment across picture, in week 25 of the year’s Best Lyric Vids.
Cold War Kids – ‘Loner Phase‘
Almost evading our lyric radar, everybody’s favorite dudes are past being hung up to dry in favor of the “Loner Phase,” in which they’ve trapped a dude in a light box to see if he can write himself out through song. Words get slashed and blotted out, paper gets torn, fun, innovative times with emotion and text:
Won’t you give me distance
To swallow the words you put on my plate
Maybe then you’ll listen
And I could get out of this one act play
Little Comets – ‘Jennifer‘
Possibly a jab at Columbia, who dropped the budding indie-clangery band before they could get going, or more a brilliantly spun pop-dis to an ex-lover, this video is filled with some of the most addictive visuals we’ve seen a lyric vid accomplish in some time – verses floating out of mouths, stop-animation, and a thin, sinewy font we can’t get enough of. So goes the reason for this column:
Her April showers
Will have soon devoured
The alacrity of May
…
Jennifer, why’d you have to be so taciturn
Cher – ‘Woman’s World‘
The lead single from Cher’s 26th album, Closer to the Truth, poaches Paul Oakenfold to and unknown Mickey Mouse Club pop outcast, Matt Morris, to through a 67-year-old fist into the nightclub air for female empowerment. Strengthening her cause streams a series of iconic pastels of the female desire, pulsating with post-bill ‘I am woman’ text. If not accurate, it’s modestly entertaining:
Everybody in the club
Stand up come together now
This is a woman’s world
John Mayer – ‘Paper Doll‘
Hey look at that, John Mayer has a sense of humor at the expense of some odd American woman who claims to have invented something called ‘Prancercize‘. Only in Florida. That said, it’s kind of like getting nice and high and discovering the many wonders of unlikely things synching up with your favorite song. If you ignore Mayer’s cutely veiled misogyny. And the cheap floating font is a nice public access-ish touch:
You’re like 22 girls in one
And none of them know what they’re runnin’ from
Was it just too far to fall
For a little paper doll?
Okkervil River – ‘It Was My Season‘
The sprawling Americana literati tease LP7, The Silver Gymnasium, with an homage to a favorite historic building in Will Sheff’s New Hampshire come-uppins ‘hood in Plainfield, in which a mid-80s lovelorn tale full peppered with Atari and VCR references plays like a old film-reel on a likewise historic backdrop that’s still intact. Everybody digs a story with character:
They say that I’ll go to college
And you will stay home
And watch while I’m leaving
And the cold just creeping in
Oh, Jason, I know