City and Colour‘s Dallas Green goes on a lover’s lament car ride in perpetual reverse, Jamie Lidell sells the sad soul out, Julian Casablancas subtitles his Stroke-ian warble and asks the eternal color question of how magenta are you, sir, have you asked yourself lately, more, in week 38 of the year’s Best Lyric Vids.
Julian Casablancas + the Voidz – ‘Dare I Care‘
New new Strokes jams, cancelled tours, Casablancas has been slacking lately, but this little crunchy industrial nugget for 2014 Tyranny gem “Dare I Care” fills the, well, void, .quite right, keyboardist Jeff Kite assembling the goods with sketch cartoon and kaleidoscopic psychedelic lettering. Which a damn good thing, because with the megaphone mic filter effect and Casablancas usual nonsensical poetry, it would be otherwise impossible to know what the hell he’s going on about. But now we know — he wants to know how magenta you are:
A-Trak – ‘We All Fall Down’ ft. Jamie Lidell
A way diluted dose of the Jamie Lidell gold-sequined one-man-band soul strut, but he’s earned his cash grab by now. A-Trak pulls all the sugarcoated dance floor stops just barely coming in danceable, letting Lidell’s gritty a cappella curtain the thing, while the blurred photo still of a contemplative dude and thick swathes of marker felt do the task they’ve been given, to make this thing as human as possible:
La Santa Cecelia – ‘I Won’t Cry For You‘
From the streets of the Mexican market on Los Angeles’ Olivera Street to the halls of the Grammys, Marisol “La Marisoul” Hernandez’s melting pot crew of Latin-American class showcase their Norteño muscles here with an English spin. Known to tackle heated immigration issues with beautiful subversive covers like The Beatles‘ “Strawberry Fields Forever,” this one twinkles the accordion in a more woman-empowerement fashion, assuring an ex-lover he won’t be cried over. The talking vanity mirror clip art gimmick is just about perfect for it:
City and Colour – ‘Lover Come Back‘
Haunting up the joint like Rufus Wainwright on a guitar-kick, Canada-born Dallas Green calls upon some organ fills and a classic alt-country stomp to voice some pleading for the proverbial lover to get on back, baby, and give it another go. The grainy Super-8 car ride in perpetual reverse couldn’t have been a better choice. Hold out for the blurry figure of a nude on a comforter amping the heartache to 11:
Audien – ‘Something Better‘ ft. Lady Antebellum
Oh, here’s another song about love, blasted with all the AOR crap the pop machine necessitates these days, drowning out all the mandolin and string charms of Lady Antebellum that made them the least bit tolerable. But the video’s set in space, and follows the misadventures of astronauts getting their star-cross on. And there are rocket ships. Watch the rocket ships:
