Today, the New Pornographers released the video for its song "War On the East Coast," the title track to its upcoming album, which will be released on August 25 through Matador Records. Here are all of my impressions of the video after watching it just one time.
1. "War On the East Coast"? Aren't the New Pornographers from Vancouver? (For those who are unfamiliar with Canadian geography, Vancouver is on Canada's west coast.)
2. If this video doesn't end up being one long take, I'm going to be very upset. No matter how crappy a scene or music video is, shooting it in one take automatically makes it more impressive.
3. Carl Newman is doing a lot of hand gestures. Is that what you're supposed to do when you don't have a guitar or microphone to hold onto? It looks pretty awkward.
4. I suppose the chorus explains the title a little bit better.
5. There's a little nod to the "Bittersweet Symphony" video when Dan Bejar bumps into those people and doesn't seem to notice. Or maybe that was just unintentional and they didn't want to start the take over again.
6. Oh boy, that garbage can looks like it was inserted digitally. Spike Lee threw a real garbage can in Do The Right Thing, so why couldn't these guys?
7. Carl Newman kind of drops the ball with the lip-synching in the second chorus. Maybe there was too much stuff flying in his face. Luckily, it happened while he's singing, "I don't care," so he could pass it off as, well, not caring.
8. Part of this seems to be in slow motion, so does that mean Carl Newman had to lip-synch along to the song at a different speed, like Weezer did for the video to "Undone (The Sweater Song)"? If he did, that's actually pretty impressive, and I take back what I said about him dropping the ball.
9. The long take and all of the car smashing reminds me a lot of Children of Men, especially the end of the movie where Clive Owen's running through a war zone.
10. Those fires can't be real. I understand that they can't actually burn down Vancouver or whatever city they're actually in, but it's still pretty disappointing. If this video had been shot in the '80s, they would have had to burn down Vancouver for real.
11. Despite some of the CGI elements, this video was actually pretty impressive. After seeing this and Lykke Li's video yesterday, there seems to be some post-apocalyptic imagery going around in indie rock. I didn't think the song was that great, though, but maybe I was just distracted by everything else going on in the video to really appreciate it.
12. After watching the video, I read Pitchfork's report on it, which said that the band was actually going for a Britpop feel, so I guess I was right to make the "Bittersweet Symphony" comparison.
What did you think of the video? Let us know in the comments section!
