Norah Jones goes Mad Men jazz lounge, Dolly “Backwoods Barbie” Parton quests for pretty in so much damn pink, Drive-By Truckers teach some ‘filthy and fried’ lessons to the youth, and more, in the 37th week of the year’s Best Lyric Vids.
Norah Jones – ‘Flipside’
It’s been a decade and a half since Jones broke into the jazz-lite scene with Come Away With Me. She has yet to busty any molds — not an easy task in the genre the peoples keep boxing her into — but as a package deal on her sixth LP, Day Breaks, this Mad Men post-war aesthetic whirling with metropolitan ad fonts and angular clip art renderings on a cut about finding oneself in a world of time and conformity and forever shitty political games is tops:
Drive-By Truckers – ‘Filthy and Fried’
Riding the heels of the politically-charged singles before it, pushing forthcoming American Band, “Filthy and Fried” gets a bit more personal with a coming-of-age narrative built around sage party advice and that sweet existence between teenage invincibility and the weight of the world coming at ya. Paired with some animated renderings of gothic western drawings from Wes Freed, of an ominous woman leering over a prairie while a crow squawks, it’s a plainspoken shot in the arm with a cheap, good glass of whiskey waiting for you:
Day Wave – ‘Gone’
Solid entry in the polaroid category, swapping out marker captions for handwritten clippings of another kind. Together with the reverb wash of the chill-wave era, take a trip down shoebox-memory lane, where super saturated shots of flowers and Jackson Phillips in nature battle with a lover long gone:
Dolly Parton – ‘Head Over High Heels’
The Backwoods Barbie’s gonna sparkle in rhinestone all the way to her deathbed at this rate. Clearly a bid for a younger audience by the powers that be, or maybe even Dolly herself. All said, if you dig pink — dresses, bedding, fucking TVs, who has a pink TV? — and women dressed up like little china dolls, here’s a picture perfect window into the pageantry:
Dillon Francis – ‘Anywhere’ ft. Will Heard
Everything but the Millennial Whoop, as Francis attempts to reconnect to some piece of his youth that’s not sullied by the dubstep dark side. This is a good thing. Embrace the class, children of the plugged-in generation. Serendipitously the song’s about the endless possibilities of DIY-ing it in the game of love, complete with a globe-lover’s hyper-color dream spin:
