I recently tried to prove to myself that all the hype about Noah and the Whale was true by giving them another listen (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8YCSJpF4g4) The video made me reveal in shock. Never before had anything been so glaringly unoriginal, so desperate to appease the inner-hipster in all of us through its use of grainy film footage, people wearing “quirky” in dress, and of course being maybe the 500th band to pay homage to Wes Anderson through the use of yellow Futura Bold. A video meant to be rebloged on tumblrs across and for a good Youtube detour when the party isn’t so thrilling.
Beach House. One of the most acclaimed bands of last year. A band that is considered very well hip and reblog ready. Being a huge fan of Teen Dream my late night musings had lead me to a quick search realquick. The result was one of the most revolting videos I have ever seen (and yes I have seen the guy get his head cut off by a Nazi.) What Beach House has done is create something more in synch with Trash Humpers (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1488163/) than the common “hipster” image. What “hipsterdom” has become is a pack of mostly females wearing Toms and fake moustaches while rebloging troll faces. Nothing wrong with this but the point I’m trying to make is that this video is not something meant to be friendly or appealing and doing something completely original while set to a song that feels very “new wave hipster” friendly. This is the work of someone that probably got kicked out of film school, someone that fantasises about V for Vendetta era Natalie Portman and probably has spent at least a week living in their car. It has everything that should give off the feel that the maker of it loves Michael Cera films (strange facial hair, bad acting, and obnoxious use of green screen) but comes off as utterly disgusting. Maybe that was Beach House’s intention. To show their disgust for the scene that they had become a pary of it and… ahh there I go reading too much into things again. I don’t know maybe it was made to be weird and out there and if that is the case than it is worse than the Noah and the Whale video. If not then bravo Beach House, for this is truly something brilliant. Marilyn Monroe once said: “Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it is better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.” Couldn’t have said it better myself, Norma.
