Tag: noah elliott morrison

PLAYING DETROIT: Anna Burch Keeps It Cool With Polyvinyl

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photo by Katie Nuemann

Few Detroit based singer-songwriters have hustled as hard as former Frontier Ruckus songstress Anna Burch, heartbreaker and sorceress of breathy lo-fi honesty. And as of last week, we aren’t the only ones to be enchanted by Burch’s brand of pretty pain and ennui. Polyvinyl Records (Xiu Xiu, Deerhoof and fellow Michigander Fred Thomas) announced Burch as the latest addition to their label last week after discovering her demo by word of mouth. The label celebrated by debuting Burch’s Noah Elliott Morrison directed video for her first single “2 Cool 2 Care.”

Exploring the impossible task of courting someone who is, well, too cool to care, Burch’s debut single shimmers with warmth despite detailing the lonesome effects of the cold shoulder and emotional ghosting. “2 Cool 2 Care” follows a restless Burch delicately trying to capture the attention of a passive lover, following him to his suburb, hula-hooping poolside with the confession “you scare me with your indifference/I like you best/when you’re a mess.” She effortlessly channels the likes of goddess Angel Olsen, but Burch is hardly following in anyone else’s footsteps.

Keep it cool and stay tuned for Burch’s debut LP, due out early 2018. For now, revisit summer vibes and shitty relationships with “2 Cool 2 Care” below:

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PLAYING DETROIT: Prude Boys Get Frisky in “Talking to Myself” Video

What do you get when you cross a water balloon fight and karaoke with one of Detroit’s most beloved dive bars? Well, you might get the latest video from garage rockers Prude Boys. The visual for their latest single “Talking to Myself” finds DIY babes Caroline Myrick, Quennton Thornbury and Connor Dodson delivering what they do best: curiously catchy, retro zombie rock whilst smoking in one of the most Instagram’d bathrooms in the 313, Hamtramck’s own Kelly’s Bar, of course.

Shot by the incomparable Noah Elliott Morrison, “Talking to Myself” encapsulates the typical midweek bar malaise of a tipsy Motor City. From an American Beauty Mena Suvari rose petal moment featuring a bearded, intoxicated patron to fence climbing, backyard wrestling and local karaoke superstars, Morrison’s visuals make a perfect marriage with  Prude Boys’ sound. It might be the shiny guitar licks or Myrick’s shimmering warble, but “Talking to Myself” delves into a fun kind of lonely. The track would feel just at home on the soundtrack for the film Clueless as it would on an episode of Netflix’s Millennial dating diary Love. Prude Boys channel montage pop with “Talking to Myself” – crafted masterfully to fit all shapes and sizes of crises.

Sing along, alone (of course) to the latest track from Prude Boys below:

PLAYING DETROIT: Baby Spice Haunts Deadbeat Beat in New Video

 

Back in 1996, five women with idiosyncratically branded personalities took the world by storm as the Spice Girls, and their demands were simple: “I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna really really really wanna zig-a-zig ah.” Those iconic words by (perhaps) the greatest girl group of all time must’ve stuck with Deadbeat Beat frontman Alex Glendening as a blueprint for candid honesty, even if no one knows what a zig-a-zig is to this day. Maybe that’s why so many Baby Spices populate the video for his band’s latest video, “See You All The Time.”

Written back in 2011 but included on the Detroit DIY Sixties pop revivalists’ upcoming debut record When I Talk To You, “See You All The Time” snaps with nostalgic undertones but is lyrically relevant for today’s ghosters (and ghostees). Our AbFab shirt-wearing protagonist describes bumping into the same person a little too frequently – or perhaps being casually stalked – but sings “I’m too polite to ever say/I just can’t deal with you today/I’ll just never call you back/and you should probably face the fact/you’re a creepy creeper creeping to the first degree.” In the video, that creepy creeper playfully takes the form of dozens of Baby Spice wannabes, but the sentiment is an all-too-familiar descriptor of complicated dating norms in a small social pool like Detroit’s.

Directed by Noah Elliott Morrison, Emma Buntons abound throughout the hazy, hallucinatory summer street adventure – in gas station slushie lines, hanging out of moving pick-up trucks, dangling from trees with swinging legs, licking lollipops in bar bathrooms. It could be a dream or a nightmare, depending on how you feel about pigtails.

Count the Baby Spices and check out Deadbeat Beat in a town near you:

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Deadbeat Beat hits the road: 
July 28 – Detroit, MI @ UFO Factory
Aug 4 – Chicago, IL @ Cole’s
Aug 5 – Indianapolis, IN @ State Street Pub
Aug 6 – Cincinnati, OH @ at Wood Dungeon
Aug 7 – Augusta, GA @ Soul Bar
Aug 9 – New Orleans, LA @ Poor Boys
Aug 10 – Austin, TX @ Beerland
Aug 11 – Hot Springs, AR @ Maxine’s
Aug 12 – Nashville, TN @ DRKMTTR
Aug 18 – Columbus, OH @ Rumba Cafe
Aug 19 – Cleveland, OH @ Maple Lanes (Maple Fest)

 

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PLAYING DETROIT: Fred Thomas “Voiceover”

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Fred Thomas has a lot of feelings (and he really wants to talk about them). He may fear transformation in the same way he might fear another perturbed thought of how he could have prevented a previous love affair from going to pieces. He may relish in the scratching of the many surfaces that camouflage and protect his tender, gooey existential crisis-inflamed interiors. But what is made clear by Fred Thomas’ latest beautifully neurotic mind-mapping narration “Voiceover” (the first taste from his forthcoming record Changer due out later next month)  is that he doesn’t quite have it all figured out and if he did, well, he might not know what to do.

“Voiceover” is a sleepless, chorus-deprived and worrisome dashboard “check engine” light. Self-deprecatingly confrontational, this pared back rock jam feels like a tightly woven string of doubts that overcame by means of emotional overload. The video is a life on loop. Repetitive thoughts are mirrored with commonly overlooked/performed imagery. From lipstick application (and lipstick removal) to uncorking wine, and to book to bookshelf placement to the subtle beauty of gently falling hemlines against the back of kneecaps, what is captured visually here is the same crisp mundanity expressed in Thomas’ artfully composed run-on sentences.

View Fred Thomas’ latest GIF-like emotional exploit below:

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