“How Are You Doing?” by The Living Sisters
Visual innovator Michel Gondry made his name directing mind-bogglingly cool videos. His newest charmer is for indie supergroup The Living Sisters’ sweet single, “How Are You Doing?”
A well-oiled exercise in sentient cinema, it seems buzzier than Gondry’s last film, The Green Hornet.
Instead of Seth Rogen dropping daddy issues and flat gags, “How Are You Doing?” shows The Living Sisters‘ Inara George, Eleni Mandell and Becky Stark gamely surviving an increasingly insane series of accidents, shootouts and disasters to attend the birth of a child.
Rather than The Green Hornet’s pricey special effects and slow-motion brawls, the music video features a triple-split screen showing off well-choreographed situational antics and low-budget animations and sculptures.
It’s the type of metafictional mash and trompe l’oeil trickery that made Gondry’s coolest films — Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Be Kind Rewind — stand out.
via Wired
I’ve been working on answering these questions for the past 2 days because I always tend to over analyze questions about what music I like. It’s probably because by love of music falls into the realm of obsession sometimes. I end up idolizing people with encyclopedic knowledge of musicians, songs and albums. Here’s a taste of soem of the obsessions I’ve had over the years.
Also, feel free to reblog this and add your own answers!
1. I think it’s a tie between Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys and Clouds Taste Metallic by The Flaming Lips. Both of these albums make me feel nothing but happiness and sounds perfect in every moment.
4. “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” by The Beach Boys. That opening melody just instantly perks my ears up. I think it’s one of the most beautiful songs ever written.
5. These questions are insanely hard for me (so much that I saved this post as a draft) so I’m not sure if I can choose one favorite band. Instead I’ll limit it to two. I think right now I like Yo La Tengo a lot. It’s come to be my default band if I’m not sure what to listen to. When I’m in the mood for a more adventurous sound I head to The Flaming Lips. I love how they’re pretty much my parents age and yet still pushing themselves to create unique sounds. I love their endless curiosity and the limitlessness of their expression.
6. Teen Dream by Beach House. It is gorgeous from beginning to end. Victoria Legrand has also quickly become one of my favorite female vocalists.
7. Choosing a single track so far is impossible so I’m limiting it to a couple:
8. I just looked through my iTunes for an embarrassingly long time looking at album artwork but the one I thought of first without that stimulation is the one I keep coming back to. It may not be my definitely answer but I think Beck’s cover for Sea Change is wonderful. Specifically the one which includes the sleeve and looks like this.
9. It took even longer for me to think of the best album art so far for this year but then it finally popped into my head. I haven’t even listened to Tokyo Police Club’s new album, Champ, but I remembered it solely on how damn exciting the cover makes it look. See for yourself.
10. I’ve never been one to gush over videos for songs that much (as I think the songs and the album as a whole are the real meat). I feel like videos are just promotion and they rarely become great enough to be called art. That being said, I am a big fan of Michael Gondry’s work and I think he takes the medium of music video to a whole new level. His video for Bjork’s “Bachelorette” creates an elaborate story which mimics the gracious nature of the song and breeds a Charlie Kaufman-esque paradox (which is a whole lot of ambition for five minutes). Gondry’s video for Cibo Matto’s “Sugar Water” is equally clever and surreal.
11. My favorite video of the year so far is definitely Spike Jonzes’s video for LCD Soundsystem’s “Drunk Girls”. I’ve never really listened to them but the video just works so well with the building music that it really adds to it. Plus a gang of riotous pandas is a hilarious idea for a video.
