o9Media

For anyone who hasn’t already heard, those crazy English folks over at Radiohead, have been holding a contest on Aniboom, where artists and filmmakers alike can submit homemade music videos to songs off of In Rainbows. The videos were then rated  by members of Aniboom and 10 semifinalists were chosen. Followed by slimming down those 10 to a lucky 5 finalists. The winner would then receive $10,000 to spend on creating a high quality production of their film or animation. Of course, Radiohead being the quirky bunch they are, decided to choose 4 of the 5 finalists and give away $40,000 total, (Sorry 5th guy). You can browse through all of the submissions or just check out the 4 finalist’s videos.

I’m usually not one to just post a video and say watch it, but this is an exception. The above is the music video for City Lights by Sleeping Beauty, a Swedish indie band. The conceptual creativity of City Lights is just staggering. And it has great production values to boot. Please enjoy this as much as I did.

I’ll be back later on this week with a more formal article.

10. Menomena – Friend and Foe

If album art was the deciding factor of AoTY, then Friend and Foe would be the cream of the crop. This album from the Portland outfit, Friend and Foe feels infinitely more sincere than their debut, I AM the FUN BLAME MONSTER! (an anagram for “The First Menomena Album”) They’ve accomplished a unique form of indie rock that glazes the requisite bass, drums and guitar in piano and tenor saxophone. All of the cuts from the album are guaranteed to get your pleasure center moving, so please, dig in.

The visual metaphor isn’t lost on me; The National are a group of disheveled, middle-aged rockers that look like they could be from any state in the U.S. A major portion of the breaks between sets on September 5th were filled by my friends’ argument on where the National were from. The answers brought back repressed memories of Ms. South Carolina: England was among the first guesses.

Since then, Wikipedia has dutifully supplied an answer and left this poor writer with little more to dwell on other than the overall brilliance of the set of the Ohio/Brooklyn alternative band.

2007 has been defined by much-hyped bands making the leap over to major labels, with varying degrees of success. The Shins managed to turn their lo-fi pop into radio-ready songs with a few knob twists and added faders, all the while keeping their brand of Morrissey-esque pop and hooks intact. Interpol’s Our Love to Admire flopped for the same reason; cleaner songs couldn’t make up for the copy-paste song writing. Now indie sweethearts Rilo Kiley are making the big plunge, releasing their homage to sex and the Studio 54 era, Under the Blacklight.