A few nice music videos
Our inboxes are filled with people telling us about new music videos that we should watch. Here are a few that we’ve been sent in the last 48 hours or so.
Diarrhea Planet - Kids
Cymbals Eat Guitars - Warning
Gengahr - Bathed In Light
Wild Beasts - Palace
Owen Pallett - In Conflict
The Knife's boring tour pics are the perfect response to boring tour pics
Hey! Want to see what your favourite band got up to while on tour? No, me neither. If you’ve seen one sponsored set of boring back stage pics – which try to make an expensive brand of camera look attractive to skint students – you’ve seen them all. The Knife have gone for a fittingly odd take on the tour diary with some incredibly dull tour pics for their ‘final ever tour’. Prepare to yawn.
Back stage hi-jinx
On the road
Cows
Flashing motorway traffic
A van
Here’s what they sound like and the group/troupe come to Manchester this very evening.
This is how you eat it
A video of the Danish National Chamber Orchestra eating the world’s strongest chillies and then trying to get through a rendition of Tango Jalousie has been doing the rounds.
It’s worth a watch as is the similarly chilli-centric clip from Parks and Recreation which inspired the title of this post.
FKA twigs and Fuse ODG delivered last night
FKA twigs made her US TV debut last night on the usually lightweight Fallon. Instead of doing a ukulele cover or japing around with Jimmy side stage she carried off a fan-assisted performance that pushed her further into an experimental shaped pigeon hole rather than the lazy ‘Alternative R’n’B’ one. It’s a good time to revisit Aimee Cliff’s Fader piece on why the phrase should die:
“Alternative” or “experimental R&B” is a term that needs to die, and that’s why I cheered when I read these words from Twigs. It’s not a genre, but more like a door to condescension. By adding the prefix, it sidelines R&B itself by implying it’s not experimental, boundary-pushing or intellectual. It throws side-eye at the genre, while at the same time claiming to have discovered something worthy within it. To call someone “alternative R&B” is pretty much the ultimate musical negging: it feels like it’s not so far away from saying, “This is innovative… for R&B.” It allows curious outsiders to have their say while still maintaining a spectre of segregation. It keeps R&B perpetually in another room.
If all that sounds a bit too heavy for you then there was a great Afro-pop performance by Fuse ODG on Jools Holland. T.I.N.A isn’t as hyperactive as Antenna but that makes it more impressive - it’s song writing that manages to marry lyrics about Mandela with African sound and a massive chorus.
Do you ever wonder what Michelle Williams is up to?
Destiny’s Child most undervalued member doesn’t often crop up in our thoughts but today - thanks to the magic of RealityTVGifs - she has. Williams is striking out on her own as a co-host of US reality show Fix My Choir. It’s a bit like Gareth Malone’s effort to get supermarket workers and P&O staff to sing in tune, but - because it’s American - things are a lot more dramatic.
She seems to be trying to market herself as a fun, carefree banter host.
Hahahahahahaha - good one, Shelly!
But unfortunately not everyone is buying the routine. Cue OTT drama gif.
The show airs tonight on US telly, but there’s no UK plans for it as of yet. For now you’ll just have to sate your appetite with old Destiny’s Child videos and these fetching gifs.
Stewart's Lee-ding the way in the field of DVD trailers
We wouldn’t usually flag up a trailer for a DVD release, seeing as it’s just reheated bits of things you’ve already seen, but this trailer for series three of Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, is a notable exception. Using Lee’s ‘falling off the kitchen counter’ skit as its basis, it transforms the show into a woozy fever dream, and reminds you why that third run was so great in the first place:
The DVD/Digital release is available from Monday.
Kendrick Lamar "covers" Taylor Swift
Why the sceptical inverted commas, you ask? Because the cover in question isn’t really a cover: it’s just Kendrick slightly tunelessly singing the chorus of Shake It Off during an interview with The Fader. Still if that’s your thing, here’s the audio:
ICYMI, here’s the great video for Kendrick’s new one i, which sees him do a nifty dance through a depressing cityscape.
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Jobs a good 'un
Given his status as a tech messiah, you’d think that Hollywood’s leading men would be queuing round the block for the role of Steve Jobs. Not so. Danny Boyle’s biopic of the late Apple co-founder is now looking for its third Jobs, following the news that Christian Bale, like Leonardo DiCaprio before him, has passed on the role. The latest name linked is Michael Fassbender. Facially, he’s closer to Jobs than those other two, though as this Guardian film story shows, the resemblance is hardly uncanny.
I’ll tell you who should play Jobs: Adam Buxton. He looks loads like him, as this carefully edited composite image of the two of them shows.
See?
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Think Pink
Ariel Pink, the indie provocateur and definitely-not-mate-of-Madonna, has a new video out and - guess what - it’s a bit weird, like. Quoth the press release:
Shot across fifteen locations around Ariel’s home city of Los Angeles, the video features the characters Pam, Candace and Heather squeezing into their second lives within a latex skin, in pursuit of sexual encounters and inner content.
The result is like a mix of Robert Altman’s Short Cuts and a Harmony Korine film. I like it, but I’m not entirely sure why.
Keep an eye out for an intriguing interview with Ariel Pink in next weekend’s Guide.
