LA scuzz punks FIDLAR take on the horror film newspaper clipping freakout scene, two doses of perfectly somber animations from a rising bluesman and a lo-fi twenty-something, the lamest baseball rally song ever and more, in the 42nd week of the years Best Lyric Vids.
Rich White Ladies – ‘Love is for the Week’
Lots of room for growth on paper for these two New York club scene divas, falling in a grey area between Nikki Minaj and early TLC, their rhymes taking a backseat to provocativeness and style. They have a ton of the latter, though, nailing this otherwise milk-toast ode to self-empowerment with a kind of M.I.A. theme splice, pairing glamour shot profiles for some lost QVC commercial with kids shooting AK-47s and of course, their lyrics in yellow infomercial class:
FIDLAR – ‘Drone’
Keeping in creative step with their never-ending roll of toilet paper back on “Leave Me Alone,” another jam from this year’s Too sees Zac Carper’s manic side take furious control of a post-it note and newspaper clipping mosaic that rivals every scrapbook freakout scene from every horror film ever made. The object of obsession here is UFOs, Carper using the Stooges-esque number as a metaphor for never becoming a ‘drone,’ i.e., boring:
William Elliott Whitmore – ‘Civilizations’
Gravel blues warrior Whitmore writes the kind of gritty parables that sneak up on your porch swinging peace and grab you by the jugular. In a fitting paring for this bare bones banjo yearner, a hand-drawn animation of the singer milling about his Midwest cornfield and one-horse town roots comforts the forever fact that all things must pass as perfect as it could hope to:
416 Boys – ‘We’re Behind the Blue Jays’
Doesn’t get much cheesier than this. Perhaps that’s why Canada only has one MLB option right now. This is a soccer mom jam — the Bare Naked Ladies popping out of a lunch box with just a keyboard and a drum machine. But we’re still including it in Best Vids because it’s October and no other team in the road to the World Series has a damn lyric video. So you can have your luck, Toronto:
Car Seat Headrest – ‘Times to Die’
New Matador lo-fi recruit keeps it simple with an otherwise surreal still of a dog person in deep thought or sleep or permanent rest, as a pair of ominous bones swoop overhead. Some woozy Wavves thrash ensues, while songwriter Will Toledo questions his divinity in a parable about his twenty-something hurdles and the music biz. It’s like a perfect Sunday Morning cartoon for the disenchanted millennial:
