Saturday, July 30, 2005

Videos - Bonnie "Prince" Billy & Smog

I know I've posted a few joke videos here but these two are legitimite. Although I use the word "legitimite" loosely with the Bonnie "Prince" Billy video.

Bonnie "Prince" Billy is a musical genius and his collaborative album (Superwolf) this year with Matt Sweeney is one of the best of the year so far. But this video is kind of freaky. It's for the track "I Gave You" off of Superwolf. It's the first single off the album although "What Are You?" and "Only Someone Running" would have been better choices for the single.

Regardless, this video is as low budget as you can get. This is "NYU film student" low-budget. The whole thing is one take with virtually no movement. However, a larger-budget video wouldn't fit Bonnie "Prince" Billy's stylings either. By the way, the guy on the ground at the end is Matt Sweeney.

Video - Bonnie "Prince" Billy - I Gave You

Smog is the one-man band of Bill Callahan who has released a series of underappreciated low-fi classics over the last decade. His new album, A River Ain't Too Much to Love, is good but hasn't overwhelmed me yet. It has a few good tracks, such as "I Feel Like the Mother of the World", "Say Valley Maker" and "The Well", but it lacks some of the variety of his other albums.

The video here is for the first of those two tracks. The important lesson of the video??? Don't trash your hotel room because the cleaning lady may only have one eye.

Video - Smog - I Feel Like Mother of the World

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

he's an attractive man, that will oldham.

Flatlander said...

Even weirder is the sexual nature of some of his lyrics. Some of them get fairly graphic which leaves me with an especially odd feeling since he's such a peculiar looking guy. I always expect him to show up as a charachter actor in a Robert Altman film or something.