Category: Video

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Toulouse, France’s Edgar Mauer Shares Gorgeous and Introspective “By any means”

Founded back in 2020 by its founder, singer/songwriter and musician Maëve Couderc as a way to work around various gender roles, the Toulouse, France-based indie outfit Edgar Mauer became a full-fledged band when sound engineer Alain Flary and drummer Camille Bigeault joined. Since then, the band has developed a sound that meshes elements of Bristol trip-hop and Kate Bush-like pop with a modern touch. 

Earlier this year, I wrote about “Elma Capser,” a slow-burning bit of dream-pop centered around Coudec’s yearning vocal, Bigeault’s tribal-like drumming and Flary’s glistening guitar lines paired with a soaring hook and chorus. Sonically, “Elma Casper” brought The Sundays, The Cocteau Twins and even Mazzy Star to mind. And much like those acts, the song itself is rooted in the deeply personal, with a novelist’s attention to psychological detail. 

The band explained, that the song’s inspiration came from a mysterious name scrawled on a wall in Paris — Elma Casper. Couderc wound up writing lyrics, imagining what Elma Casper’s life would be, while also wondering if someone scrawled her name on a random wall, if they would be as a curious as she was. They also add that the song is an ode to the feelings and experience we leave behind when living and leaving a place, accepting our own trajectory.

The Toulouse-based trio’s latest single “By any means” continues a run of gorgeous and introspective dream pop-inspired material featuring shimmering, reverb-drenched guitars, Couderc’s achingly plaintive vocal paired with an enormous hook and chorus. While sonically, “By any means” will bring back some fond memories of 4AD Records classic heyday and 120 Minutes-era MTV, the song as the band explains is a self-empowerment anthem.

Directed by Patrycja Toczek and the band, the video stars Edgar Mauer’s Couderc as a bored version of herself in the park on a lovely day, when she encounters a cheery monster played by Léna Base, who spends the day with Couderc. Throughout their time together, they play a variety of games — and we see Couderc eventually cheer up. The video itself possesses a goofy, DIY charm that’s just adorable.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: MOMO. Shares Breezy and Wistful “Diz a Verdade”

Marcelo Frota is a Brazilian-born singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist best known as MOMO. Frota has been a true global citizen: He has lived in Brazil, Angola, the US, Spain, and Portugal — and he currently resides in the UK.

Frota’s critically applauded debut album, 2006’s A Estética do Rabisco quickly established the Brazilian-born artist as the forefront of a new Brazilian psychedelia movement, influenced by Os Mutantes, Milton Nascimento‘s Clube Da Esquina, and Tropicália: ou Panis et Circensis. A Estética do Rabisco was also named one of Chicago Reader‘s best albums of that year.

Since then, Frota has released five more albums that have seen him build up an international profile while further developing a unique gift of reinventing classic music genres rooted in delicate melodies, earnest lyricism and dexterous acoustic guitar. The Brazilian-born, British-based artist has won the praise of music icons like David Byrne and Patti Smith. He also has contributed to a tribute compilation album for Caetano Veloso‘s 70th birthday, featuring songs performed and recorded by Devendra Banhart, Beck, Rodrigro Amarante and the aforementioned Os Mutantes. Additionally, MOMO. has toured the States, Brazil and Portugal a number of times, including a live show at David Lynch‘s Silencio Club in Paris — and an opening spot for Andrew Bird at 2016’s Misty Fest.

Frota’s sixth MOMO. album, I Was Told to Be Quiet was originally released digitally back in September 2019. The album’s material was written in Lisbon and sees the Brazilian singing lyrics in Portuguese, English, and French. The Brazilian-born artist moved into the home of Los Angeles-based producer Tom Biller for the collaborative month-long recording sessions.

Biller, who has worked with an eclectic array of artists including Elliott Smith, Fiona Apple, Sean Lennon, Karen O., and Kanye West brought a new element of creativity and contemporary production to Frota’s sound and approach that paired samples and synths with MOMO.’s love and predilection for timeless singer/songwriters and the Brazilian sounds and styles, which shaped his childhood — in particular, Bossa nova and psych folk.

To celebrate the album’s third anniversary, Yellow Racket Records will be releasing I Was Told to Be Quiet on vinyl for the first time ever on October 28, 2022. But along with the vinyl release announcement, the Brazilian-born, British-based artist shared album single “Diz a verdade,” a subtly modern take on Bossa nova that pairs Frota’s achingly plaintive yet breezy delivery with strummed acoustic guitar, twinkling synths, Brazilian percussion and layered ahhs. And while being a remarkably slick synthesis of deliberate craftsmanship and electronic production, “Diz a verdade” is rooted in heartbreak, regret and the hope for a better day.

The accompanying video for “Diz a verdade” stars MOMO. and his young dopplegänger Meie Castanho on a rooftop full of bric-a-brac and signifiers of childhood — an enormous teddy bear, a rocking horse and the like. The video is charming yet full of heartbreak over the things we can’t get back.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Courtney Barnett Performs “Turning Green” on “Late Night with Seth Meyers”

With the release of 2012’s I’ve Got a Friend Called Emily Farris EP and 2013’s How to Carve a Carrot Into a Rose, Melbourne-based singer/songwriter and guitarist Courtney Barnett received critical acclaim from outlets across North America, the UK and Australia for work that paired witty and rambling conversational-like lyrics delivered with an ironic deadpan paired with enormous, power chord-driven arrangements.

While those successes may have seemed to come about overnight, they actually didn’t; Barnett carved out a reputation for being one of Melbourne’s best guitarists, which was cemented with a stint in Dandy Warhols’ Brent DeBoer’s side project Immigrant Union and a guest spot on on Jen Cloher‘s third album, In Blood Memory.

Barnett’s full-length debut, 2016’s Sometimes I Sit and Think, Sometimes I Just Sit, which featured “Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go To The Party” and the T. Rex-like “Elevator Operator was released to critical praise across the world. The acclaimed Aussie artist collaborated with Kurt Vile on 2017’s critically and commercially successful Lotta See Lice, which landed at #5 on the Aussie charts, #11 on the British charts and #51 on the American charts. 

Her sophomore solo album, 2018’s Tell Me How You Really Feel, which featured the motorik groove-driven “City Looks Pretty” continued an enviable run of critical and commercial success. Barnett supported Tell Me How You Really Feel with a three month world tour that included some of her biggest tour steps in Australia at the time. 

Barnett’s Stella Mozgawa co-produced third album Things Take Time, Take Time was released earlier this year through Mom + Pop Music and Marathon Artists. Centered around intimately detailed songwriting, Things Take Time, Take Time finds the acclaimed Aussie crafting a journey through heartbreak, recovery and all the soft moments in between that speak to the feelings and experiences that are innately human. 

Now if you’ve been frequenting this site over the course of this year, you may recall that I’ve written about “Before You Gotta Go,” a lovely ballad that’s one-part frustrated kiss-off and one-part gracious send-off rooted in bittersweet, lived-in experience: the hope that the last words between you and a soon to be former lover, won’t be unkind.

Along with an extensive North American tour, Barnett has made the rounds of the late night, Stateside talk show circuit. Earlier this year, Barnett played the introspective garage rocker “If I Don’t Hear From You Tonight,” an empathetic portrayal of the desperate self-doubt and awkwardness of a crush that’s more than likely equally requited yet not exactly confirmed or expressed on Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Barnett was recently on Late Night with Seth Meyers, where the acclaimed Aussie singer/songwriter and her backing band played a loose and jammy rendition of garage rock anthem “Turning Green,” complete with Barnett playing a roaring solo.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Blessed Shares Brooding “Redefine”

With the release of 2020’s self-released, full-length debut, the Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada-based art rock/post punk outfit Blessed — Drew Riekman, Reuben Houweling, Jake Holmes and Mitchell Trainor — received attention for crafting a self-assured, fully formed sound and aesthetic informed by their reverence for their small, rural city, located in British Columbia’s Fraser Valley. 

Last year’s iii EP saw the Abbotsford-based act further expanding upon their sound and approach: The EP’s material featured glitchy electronics, measured drum work and guitar work that frequently shifted from chiming and cheerful to serrated and snarling with a turn of a phrase, paired with Reikman’s tenor vocals. The EP continued the long-held ethos of collaboration and community that’s been at the center of their work. The self-produced EP was recorded at Vancouver-based Rain City Recorders with vocals tracked at friends’ houses across their hometown. They then recruited four different mixers for each EP’s song — Purity Ring’s Corin Roddick, Tortoise’s John McEntire, Holy Fuck‘s Graham Walsh and the band’s own Drew Riekman. 

Blessed’s Drew Riekman credits Fraser Valley’s previous generation of DIY artists with fostering a strong sense of local responsibility, pride and solidarity that the band aims to perpetuate and continue for younger generations. In fact, they do so by attending city council meetings, by booking all-ages shows with local acts and by sharing resources with younger artists leaning the ropes of recording, touring and grant application. 

iii‘s material as Riekman said at the time, reflected his own experiences and struggles with anxiety, which at its worse confined him to his home for months at a time. “I really struggled with agoraphobia when I was younger, and still do to this day,” Riekman said in press notes. Frequently, collaborating with members of their community helped create a “feeling of the world getting smaller” and served as a salve for anxiety and uncertainty. 

Blessed’s sophomore album Circuitous is slated for an October 28, 2022 release through Flemish Eye. “‘Circuitous: Of a route or journey, longer than the most direct way,” Blessed’s Drew Riekman recites. Interestingly enough, the word is a description of a profound and rare way of creating that makes their sophomore album, much like their previous releases, a singular, moving and unsettlingly committed piece of work. 

Circuitous reportedly will further cement and expand the band’s status as a band’s band: a patient, eclectic outfit guided by reverence for and an intense pursuit of an internally-dictated creative agenda focused on musicality, songwriting, performance and artistic growth. The album sonically sees them sharpening their strengths and bringing more depth and expansion into their creative process: The end result is a sweeping, industrial art-rock tragedy rooted in walls of noise, tightly controlled drums, meandering ambient and staccato syncopation that was pulled from hours of jam material and hundreds of demos. 

While the album’s eight tracks sprawl, thrash, burst and fall, the album’s material thematically touches upon agoraphobia, isolation, grief, the hyper control of capital and the numbness it breeds. 

Last month, I wrote about album single “Anything,” a slow-burning, hypnotic and brooding track featuring looping and shimmering guitars, bubbling electronics, thunderous drumming, and a propulsive and throbbing bass lines paired with Riekman’s plaintive vocals. But at its core, is a song that incisively ridicules modern life. 

“The narrative that you can be anything if you work hard enough is absurd. It ignores so many facets of life, development, geography, class, on and on et al,” Blessed’s Riekman says in press notes. “But it pits people against each other in an effort to become ‘something’, a ‘something’ that is loosely defined and shaped by personality rather than a communal vision. It creates a pedestal to put yourself or others on. You’re never good enough, because there’s always someone above you doing more. We’re reaching for unattainable lifestyles, that we don’t even need, that are hyper individualistic and negate the need for community. When you’re looking at the environment you exist in socially as a pyramid, and there’s people you want to be closer to “at the top”, that’s a net negative for anyone. The more accessible we are, and on the level with each other we are in our immediate places, the more we gain.”

“Redefine,” Circuitous‘ second and latest single is slow-burning and patient song centered around dexterous and shimmering acoustic guitar lines and jazz-like percussion paired with Riekman’s achingly plaintive delivery. While sonically “Redefine” may draw comparisons to OK Computer-era Radiohead., the song is rooted longing for much more than the banality of wake, sleep, eat, work until you die.

“The idea that we cannot disrupt the status quo only serves someone with power over us,” Blessed’s Riekman says of the new single’s thematic concerns. “It’s easy to feel that you’re never doing enough, that your mere existence in the face of crushing weights of the world isn’t an act of triumph in itself. We’re generally fed a narrative at this juncture that no one works hard enough, and your circumstances are your own fault exclusively. Being told that the only path forward is working 10 hour days, volunteering your labor to companies that make billions, and that you’ll one day be rewarded is a farce.” 

Continuing their ongoing collaboration with visual artists Nathan Donovan and Jacob Dutton, the artists and the band have begun to tease out a unique visual universe through a series of stills, images and video shorts.  The duo’s latest video for “Redefine” is the second part of an animated diptych that features the android protagonist of the AI-inspired video for “Anything” in the same claustrophobic maze of corridors and doors. But the video tells a different side of the story: This time, the story unfolds through the perspective of security cameras and computers in an eerily, nondescript office, complete with a coffee mug right in the corner, and some Post-It notes.

Brooding and uneasy suspense are created through long, lingering shots that capture the monotony and banality of modern life. Without being given a clue to whether the viewer is seeing from the perspective of another observer or if they’re a fly on the wall, the viewer is forced to contemplate their complicity and role in the story.  

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Julien Chang Shares Funky Yet Introspective “Snakebit”

Throughout 2019, I spilled quite a bit of virtual ink covering Baltimore-born multi-instrumentalist, singer/songwriter, producer and college student Julien Chang (pronounced Chong). Initially only thought of as “just a trombone player,” the Baltimore-born artist surprised his peers when he quietly began releasing original music saw him playing multiple instruments while meshing psych rock, pop-inspired melodicism and jazz fusion-like experimentation and improvisation with a sophistication and self-assuredness that belied his youth. Thematically, Chang’s work sees him tunneling towards deeper truths, while touching upon everyday existentialism, love, life, art — and his own life as a human and artist. 

Those early releases caught the attention of Transgressive Records, who signed Chang and released his acclaimed full-length debut, 2019’s Jules, which featured: 

  • “Of The Past,” a sleek, early 80s-like synth funk-based track centered around dexterous musicianship and pop melodicisim 

  • “Butterflies from Monaco,” a slow-burning Sgt. Pepper-era Beatles-like track

  • “Memory Loss” an 80s synth funk inspired song that continued a remarkable run of self-assured material centered around dazzling musicianship and big hooks. 

Chang’s highly-anticipated — and long-awaited — sophomore album The Sale is slated for a November 4, 2022 release through Transgressive Records. Partially recorded in Baltimore and partially in his Princeton dorm room, The Sale is a DIY effort with Chang playing all instruments — with the odd exception of a few notable cameos from some Baltimore locals, classmates and old friends. Thematically, The Sale‘s material sees the rising Baltimore artist exploring the discrepancy between two worlds, a struggle to get comfortable in either one of them, and an artistic fascination with that very struggle. 

Earlier this year, I wrote about “Marmalade,” a single that found the Baltimore-born artist leaning heavily into lo-fi indie pop with the song featuring glistening guitar lines, punchy drums, Chang’s layered, ethereal falsetto and some remarkably infectious hooks. But the song is underpinned by Chang’s long-held penchant for expansive, psych pop-influenced song structures.

Interestingly, “Marmalade” isn’t as much of a love song, as much as it is about the way one’s memory makes sense of love — and the experience of being in and out of love. “I think the point is that memory runs up against certain limits in sense-making and then has to start relying on fictions,” Chang says.  “I wrote ‘Marmalade’ at a time in which this feeling of passionate regret had just finished transforming into something domesticated, incorporated, and basically mundane — a part of everyday life, something that pops up in the mind from time to time and causes me to scrunch my nose.”

Chang continues, “The verses are the positive struggle of trying to make sense of a past romantic experience; the choruses are the ensuing confrontation with non-sense (“I nearly lost my name!”); and the euphoric outro is the resulting victory of a false memory (“I remember falling in love! I remember falling in love! I remember falling in love!”). 

The Sale‘s third and latest single “Snakebite” sees Chang effortlessly meshing elements of smooth jazz, jazz fusion, Tame Impala-like psych pop and pop in what may arguably be the lush, funkiest and yet most introspective song of Chang’s growing catalog.

“‘Snakebit’ emerged during a period of transformation. This was around the time I left Baltimore for University in the middle of New Jersey,” Chang explains in press notes. “The awkwardness of the transition and the discomfort of ‘growing pains’ provoked in me a kind of creative agitation which found its outlet most decisively in this song. But the song is not only about changing. It is also about encountering change: in a reflective turn, encountering myself who is changing and then interrogating him, testing the limits of the ‘new me’ before finding that I am really not so different.”

Created by multidisciplinary artist Vaughn Taormina, the accompanying video for “Snakebit” draws from an eclectic array of influences including Jacques Tati’s Playtime, 80s Japanese advertisements, the concept of dopplegängers and more. The video also begins with “Snakebite Side,” a cinematic and jazzier, kissing cousin to the original single.

“The song takes the form of a self-interrogation. I have changed, but how? and when? Why? This video simulates the fragmented, unfocused, and self-contradictory search for clues that one falls into trying to answer,” Chang says of the video. “Taken as a whole, the animations all seem to go together on a single string, but examined individually, it is clear that what binds them is not any logical order. In this sense, the video has the structure of a dream. While dreaming, a rapid sequence of freely-associated images and events seems to make perfect sense. It is only upon sober reflection the following morning that these images and events become absurd, random, and nonsensical.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: clo Returns with Vibey “Big Smile”

clo is an emerging, 20-year-old, San Francisco-born, Brussels-raised, neo-soul/R&B and jazz singer/songwriter, who’s currently splitting her time between New York and Paris, where she’s simultaneously pursuing studies in Neuroscience while modeling, and starting a professional music career. 

The emerging Belgian-born artist can trace the origins of her music career to when she started receiving classical and jazz training in piano when she turned four. Since then, clo has spent much of her formative years creating her own original music, inspired by Etta James, Ella Fitzgerald, Snoh Aalegra, and CELESTE. 

Earlier this year, I wrote about clo’s debut single “room,” a slow-burning and vibey ballad centered around the young Belgian-born artist’s sultry vocals paired with a brooding production featuring skittering, tweeter and woofer rattling trap beats, twinkling jazz piano and atmospheric synths. The song reveals an artist, who’s remarkably self-assured beyond her relative youth — while showcasing an artist, with an uncanny knack for mature, lived-in lyricism and a well-placed, razor sharp hook. 

Her second single “Big Smile” is a vibey, neo-soul-like ballad that finds the emerging young artist collaborating with a live band, which gives the song a lush, cinematic sound and a vibrant, you’re-there-in-the-studio immediacy — all while continuing to reveal a singer/songwriter with a mature beyond her years self-assuredness.

The accompanying video for “Big Smile” primarily features home video shot footage of the young San Francisco-born artist as a small child. The video hints at the very origins of the young artist’s passion and career and a loss of innocence and simplicity.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Montreal’s Paupiére Shares Atmospheric “New Balance”

With the release of their full-length debut, 2017’s  À jamais privé de réponses and two EPs, 2016’s 2016’s Jeunes instants EP and 2019’s Jettatura EP, rising Montreal-based indie electro pop duo Paupiére — visual artist Julia Daigle and Polipe’s and We Are Wolves‘ Pierre-Luc Bégin — quickly established a sound that features and meshes elements of 80s English synth pop and New Wave with French chanson. But underneath the breezy melodies and infectious hooks, the Quebecois duo’s work thematically touches upon naive, adolescent and hedonistic romanticism and a contemporary sense of ennui.

Last year, the Montreal-based electro pop duo released their sophomore album, the Vincent Levesque-produced Sade Sati, an album that featured singles like:

“Coeur monarque,” an infectious and sugary sweet pop confection centered around shimmering synth arpeggios, skittering polyrhythmic beats and boy-girl harmonies. Sonically, the song is a playful, hook-driven mix of Phil Spector-era pop and Ace of Base-like synth pop — but thematically, as the duo explain the song is much darker: “‘Coeur Monarque’ is an imaginary tale about a girl, who lives her life according to her moods. Her freedom contributes to her isolation and she loses herself in it.”

“Sade Sati,” which derived its title from a term in Indian astrology, a period of 7.5 years that involves many challenges but also recognition and great achievements. It’s karma, the sum of the arts of the present life but also of previous ones, the duo explain in press notes. Much like its immediate predecessor, the album title track is a sugary sweet pop confection, featuring an enormous hook and shimmering synth arpeggios paired with Daigle’s sultry delivery describing the movements of the planets — in this case, Saturn — and how they influence all the aspects of our lives.

Paupiére recently released a deluxe edition of Sade Sati that features two instrumentals, which were recorded during the Sade Sati sessions but were left off, a remix by Canadian electronic music artist Das Mörtal and five songs recorded at the album’s virtual launch at Montreal’s Le Ministére (on the digital version only). And to celebrate the occasion, the duo recently shared, their latest single, the atmospheric “New Balance.”

Centered around Bégin’s breathy delivery, glistening synths and a relentless motorik-like groove, the slow-burning “New Balance” is a fever dream full of regret, hope, and the recognition that every day is a chance to start anew — even if there may not be a second chance to get it right.

Directed by French-born, Quebec-based animator Lauren Haddock, the accompanying video for “New Balance” follows Paupiére’s Pierre-Luc Bégin as he runs through one fantastic world after another, and eventually into space.