If he weren’t so fond of dropping the word ‘motherfucker’ into his music, we would totally play these guys around the house more often. We refuse to spell their name in all caps, though. It looks as though they’re yelling at us.
Capitalization aside, we’ve been high on these guys since “Burn It Down” landed in our inboxes early last year – in fact, we were so eager to share that song in this column that we went with a homemade video of the song instead of waiting for the band to shoot an official clip – and the video for their latest single “Not Your Fault” is just too cool not to share. Half stop-motion a la Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer” and half Rankin & Bass-style claymation (including an abominable snowman), this video is a throwback in the best possible way. It’s nice to see bands still put some effort into their videos.
Behold, the societal plague of the 2050s: aging hipsters.
Actually, this Ontario quintet has some fun with the idea of an older guy getting his swerve on as he leaves his wife at home for the night, steps out with the band, shots are downed and, well, we all know that no good comes from multiple rounds of shots. Especially if you can’t pay the bill. Is the PBR reference innocuous, or a sly dig? We like to think it’s the latter.
Remember when bands used to smile for photographs?
While the video is cute, we would not be featuring it here if we didn’t really dig the song the clip is promoting. “Baby” beats Brooklyn-by-way-of-Madison garage poppers Locksley at their own game, deftly blending crunchy guitars with super-catchy melodic hooks. Singer Mike Veerman sounds a bit like Caleb Followill as well, which makes us wonder how much more we’d like Kings of Leon if they wrote songs this tight and fun.
Admittedly, this is not much of a happy hour song, but it’s Veteran’s Day – there aren’t a whole lot of upbeat songs about war veterans and what they endure in order to preserve freedom for the rest of us. Whatever your feelings about war, we should all thank our lucky stars that there are men and women who are willing to do the unthinkable so we can tweet from the safe zone about how miserable our meaningless little lives are. Just sayin’.
While we had our choice of songs on the subject, we went with Billy Joel’s “Goodnight Saigon” for a number of reasons. For starters, it’s one of his best songs, with an unforgettable climbing piano progression. Second of all, he describes the vibe of the soldiers like he was there. Unbridled enthusiasm and naivete became fear, panic and the kind of mental scarring that does not fade with time. He even brings in what are clearly Vietnam veterans to sing the simple but devastating chorus of “And we would all go down together.” Joel has written some enduring work, but this is his most powerful.
For those unfamiliar with this song, may we suggest that you hunt down The Nylon Curtain, the album from which it came, at once. (To make this easier, we included a link to the album on Spotify above.) It is, in our opinion, Joel’s best album by a country mile. Think of it as a giant tribute to the Beatles, and a dark, angry tribute at that.
We rarely miss an opportunity to promote a worthy band from Down Under (see: Midnight Juggernauts, Oh Mercy). Our latest entry is All Mankind, which produced a rather amusing search list when we put their name into a certain music site we frequent which shall remain nameless. The results were almost exclusively death metal bands, something All Mankind is decidedly not.
Look at those boys. Do they look like death metalers? Perish the thought, though the bassist does rock a Jason Newsted-style stance in the clip for their new single “Can You Hear Me.” Think Coldplay with a less polarizing lead singer, or Keane with guitars, and you’re close: the track boasts one of those mile-wide choruses that is begging for stadium love. The clip shows the band on the run from a couple of authoritarians, though why the Man would want to keep down a band like this is anyone’s guess. This song doesn’t want a revolution, and that’s all right.
