Pop-punk vets, Anti-Flag, take on the Charlottesville idiocy, Bay Area art-rock crew Deerhoof deliver a first of its write-your-own lyric video we’ve seen around these parts, nerd-glammers Sparks pay homage to the ‘missionary position’ and more, in another fascinating week of the year’s Best Lyric Vids.
Anti-Flag – ‘Racists’
Punk and politics, regardless if even coherent, are just one of those bread and butter pairings that at the very least, lets off a little steam. It helps that these dudes came of amplified age in the Bush Sr.-era and who kind of had a little bit more to say in the mid-90s than their Warped Tour-ilk peers. At any rate, this one comes out swinging at the madness that happened in Charlottesville and fights back against racism, ignorance and bigotry with myriad singalong punchlines and a protest-sign spin on a visual checklist:
Deerhoof – ‘Singalong Junk’
We’ve seen plenty of interactive and high-art vids over the Best Lyric Vids series, but never a fill-in-the-blank number, a la the Bay Area art-pop crew, Deerhoof, here. With a jazzy, Dirty Projectors-ish orchestration, a bevy of “la la”s from front-woman, Satomi Matsuzaki, and a counter full of oranges, choose your adventure, dear lyric scribe and blast the team at the hashtag, #singalongjunk:
Gizmodrome – ‘Summer’s Coming’
A season late and a dollar short it may seem, but maybe that’s the point, with this tongue-in-cheek space dad rock jam from a supergroup of talent drawn together from Frank Zappa‘s band (Adrien Belew), the Police (Stuart Copeland), Level 42 (Mark King), and Italian virtuoso Vittorio Cosma. The Zappa diction influence shines, as the magazine-clipping art direction brings it home:
Sparks – ‘Missionary Position’
Upping the comedy element ten-fold on this week’s entry, notorious falsetto nerd-glam rockers, Sparks, patchwork together a bunch of famous sculptures and a liberal use of the smudge tool in Photoshop around various genitals to illustrate the wonders of the ‘missionary position’. It all comes off like one of those museum audio tours gone hilariously awry, hijacked by Monty Python or something:
Yelle – ‘Romeo’
And rounding out the bunch we have a contribution from French electropop starlets of repeat Coachella fame ruling the furry boot set with a mosaic of Hollywood teen rom-com past silhouetted over a screen and an anonymous torso of a dancer. Bound around a protagonist in search of a ‘Romeo’, it’s got discotheque written all over it:
