Green Day say they want a revolution, Bon Iver rides a thunderstorm from Jeebus, B.o.B. puts his world-is-flat ideology on hold to talk about fingerprints and more, in week 36 of the year’s Best Lyric Vids.
Green Day – ‘Revolution Radio‘
Upping the political statement first single “Bang Bang” showed its teeth with, Green Day’s LP12 is shaping up to be a little firecracker for the aging pop-punk figures. Here in the title track Billie Joe Armstrong alludes to a comment he made about the #BlackLivesMatter movement, in which he attests that a lot of white peoples’ roles, himself included, should be to “shut up and listen,” before attempting to move forward. His solution from there isn’t anything we don’t already know — love and truth — though, combined with another clip art masterpiece montage of gas masks and giant guitars that turn into bombs, it’s charm all the way:
Bon Iver – ‘33 God‘
Justin Vernon’s trajectory with Bon Iver is refreshingly challenged by his own clearly high ambitions to shake off the barn-retreat sad white dude stigma from For Emma, Forever Ago, but it’s getting out of hand, man. He’s more vocoder than man now, cryptically playing around with psalms and 3:33-minute tracks, sermonizing a stint at the Ace Hotel. Minus all that, the video’s pretty rad, actually, distorting a classic midwestern thunderstorm into a strobing tapestry of graphic design and Bible passages:
B.o.B – ‘Fingerprint‘
Another garbage song from a dude that seems to believe that the wold has ceased to be spherical and is instead, flat. Though another video that makes it tolerable, capping both the front and back ends with an old gospel cover of “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” and a hypnotic 3-D fingerprint animation filling the gaps. “Re-blood-blicans and demo-crips” is pretty hilarious, too:
Crystal Fighters – ‘All Night‘
The UK Spaniard transplants deviate from their more cacophonous explorations in electronic party jams and double-down on the Millennial Whoop, On the kaleidoscope video it’s translated to “eya ah oh” with a flying cheetah behind it. Not many layers here, empty cal party swag without a stupid ass ‘drop’. Enjoy:
The Dear Hunter – ‘Light‘
Part of a six-record concept series in which Casey Crescenzo is attempting to rival Richard Linklater’s 12-year Boyhood narrative, we see the ‘boy’ hero of Crescenzo’s tale wax poetic about his father. It’s hard to treat this as it’s own entity, but shot on tree trunks and rural green belt for days, the coming-oif-age lessons splayed on the foliage leave a special kind of folk permanence ringing in your ears:
