It’s video roundup time! Once again, Howl And Echoes are coming in hot with the freshest, most eyeball stimulating music videos to be dropped by the artists you love and some of the artists you don’t know you love yet, of this week. We do all the dirty work and herd them all into one convenient web-based location for you to enjoy every Friday so that you don’t have to. Have yourself a good old gander at the latest offerings from:
Fascinator – The Traveller
Johnny Mackay, the artist otherwise known as Fascinator is at it again with the second track off of his much-anticipated debut album Man and its music video. The track is titled The Traveller, and is deliciously off-beat, layers of funk and dream pop punctuated by haunting vocals and regal trumpets befitting of the subject of the video, which is excellent in its simplicity.
It’s a day in the life of your average New York City dwelling, decked in full battle armour knight. Eating his morning serve of Special K, riding the subway to and from New York’s Renaissance Fair (where of course nobody bats an eyelid, because New York) and going medieval on everybody’s ass getting in on all the fun.
Man is due out early 2016 via Spinning Top Records.
Manor – Grand Mal
Melbourne duo Manor have been on our watchlist of late. They just last week released a new tune, Grand Mal, and this week released its music video counterpart. The track itself is an odd and spinetingling hybrid of psychedelic and industrial, vocalist Caitlin Duff’s ghostly vocals wrapped up in some jarring instrumentation from Manor’s other half Nathaniel Morse.
The video is a kaleidoscope of colours and shapes interposed with overlapping shots of Duff, it fits the sonic appeal of Grand Mal perfectly. The track is from their upcoming EP, and if this and previous single Can You Hear Me Talking At You are anything to go by it should be a solid bedrock of a debut release upon which the duo can build bigger things.
Daughter – Numbers
London-based trio Daughter have an album of their own due out in the waking light of 2016, their sophomore LP Not To Disappear. They’re getting all kinds of ambitious with it as well, this week releasing the second installment in a cinematic trilogy they’ve commissioned for the album. The first was Doing The Right Thing earlier in the year and now we have a sequel in Numbers.
The tune kicks off with some minimalistic instrumentation surrounding the gorgeous vocals of frontwoman Elena Tonra before taking flight via the aid of an unrelenting drumbeat that dances around some nifty low-key guitars, and from there it doesn’t touch the ground again. The kind of song made for late nights and loneliness, Daughter do a wonderful job of bringing the listener all but to their knees. The journey of the woman in red around a neon-drenched after dark urban wonderland is beautifully shot and only enhances a wonderful song.
Not To Disappear is out January 15th, 2016 via 4AD/Remote Control Records.
Tindersticks – Lucinda
Nottingham rockers Tindersticks have been plugging away for more than two decades, putting out ten albums in total so far and just a few months shy of releasing their 11th, The Waiting Room, in January of next year. It’s set to be an ambitious record both sonically and visually, with each song to be accompanied by a short film.
Hey Lucinda is one of those songs and it’s absolutely bone-chilling in both sound and context. It’s a duet between Tindersticks frontman Stuart Staples and Lhasa De Sela, a friend of his who tragically lost her life after recording the track. It burns slowly and builds beautifully throughout, the video a dusky wander through the seen-better-days nightlife of an English town.
The Waiting Room is out January 22nd, 2016 via Inertia.
Plaitum – LMHY
Another London-based act, this time a duo, is Plaitum. They’re another one we’ve had our eye on for quite a while and their latest single and video for LMHY, from their forthcoming and eponymous debut EP, are keeping them glued firmly there. It’s electro-pop gone through a grimy shredder, urgent vocals that alternate between ethereal and screaming, twisting and writhing around stark and shuddering synths and off-kilter trap beats.
The video is a mesmerising lo-fi light show, shots of the duo filtered through all manner of clashing greens and oranges that arrests your eyes as much as the sound does your ears.
Plaitum is out December 4th via Wolf Tone/Caroline Australia
Here We Go Magic – Be Small
Brooklyn indie rock trio Here We Go Magic recently released their newest LP Be Small, their first since 2012s A Different Ship. Critically acclaimed as an album, the band have since released the eponymous first single from it as well as a video to go with it.
I loved it, a contemporary grim reaper who wears uh… sandals and wheels around a suitcase along with the traditional tattered black robes and hood, wandering around the pedestrian parks and streets of Hudson New York like it ain’t a thing.
Be Small is out now via Secretly Canadian on Inertia.
Ivan Ooze – Fire
Ivan Ooze, apart from sharing the name of that evil purple motherfucker who brainwashed all the parents in the Power Rangers movie, is a Melbourne MC who continues to drop jaws everywhere. His latest single is FIRE, both in title and in general sonic terms.
The video is awash with scuzz and sleaze, featuring burning dictionaries, tables, laptops, spliffs (you name it, he’ll burn it) and an array of 0ther pyrotechnics around an orange-jumpsuited Ooze, whose snarling machine gun flow never once hints at relenting. The production is fittingly industrial and stomps along wonderfully as Ooze shrieks over the chorus ‘I bring the fuckin’ fire’ (pronounced ‘fiyahhh’ of course).
Not your conventional Aussie hip hop by any means, refreshingly bizarre and masterfully crafted.
Elizabeth Rose – Shoulda Coulda Woulda
I’m not someone who thoroughly enjoys pop music usually, but Sydney songstress Elizabeth Rose has really captured me with latest single Shoulda Coulda Woulda. Co-produced by M-Phazes, the track has been spun like a spiderweb on Australian airwaves since its release, hypnotic and warped synths the driving force behind Rose’s sugary (but never saccharine) pop voice.
That’s what ensnared me, the sound is sonically pleasing pop but not in the traditional sense. Everything about the track, the lyricism and the production in particular, are highly intelligent and deftly-crafted. The video is mesmerising too, featuring Rose trapped in a 360 degree mirror room, alternating neon lights and rhythmic dancing all but chokeholding the attention of your eyeballs.
The track is from her upcoming debut LP Intra, all indications thus far suggesting Australia has produced yet another wonderfully talented pop artist in Elizabeth Rose.
Intra is out March 4th via Midnight Feature/Inertia.
MS MR – Criminals
Heading back to the Big Apple for the next video, we’ve got the latest from much-acclaimed duo MS MR. Their latest offering is for single Criminals. It’s nothing short of infectious, each verse guided along by the heavenly vocals of singer Lizzy Plapinger until the driving chorus drops in and grabs you by the collar. The production from the MR of MS MR, Max Hershenow, is nothing short of stellar. Criminals is multi-layered dream pop with lashings of darkness and its thumping chorus will have you hitting the repeat button to no end.
The video landing with it is a neon dream, directed by Charlotte Rutherford, who has previously worked with artists like Charlie XCX and Marina And The Diamonds. Like the song it visualises, the video is full of glitzy neon lights but with a shadowy vibe throughout. Watch it and be enthralled.
Polish Club – Beeping
Having dropped their debut EP just last month and winning over damn near everyone, Sydney power-duo Polish Club are set for a massive breakout very soon. Their raucous old time rock and roll sound, driven by the raw and guttural vocals of frontman Novak that are damn near inimitable, is catchier than the clap and few new releases from an Australian band have grabbed me the way theirs did.
Beeping, their third single from their eponymous debut, was one of those tracks. Two and a half minutes of raw, foot-tapping rock and roll straight out of the garage. The video is lo-fi renaissance art in itself, made using a fucking photocopier. I don’t even want to know how many hours this took to put together, just watch and appreciate and tell everybody you got on the bandwagon while there were still seats.
Polish Club is out now via MGM Distribution.