Music Video – A Happy Glimpse of a Sparkly, Turquoise Future
Music Video – Fireproof Your T.V.
Self-released
By Matt Brown
Moonlight caresses snowdrifts on either side of the tree-lined mountain highway and I’m heading into northern Arizona, riding shotgun on a bedroom furniture delivery. My day started at 7 a.m., the Tucson sun rising to find me hungover and daydreaming on my front porch. Today will end at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning, hungover again with boots crunching packed snow, staggering, smiling and exhausted through icy Flagstaff streets back to my hotel room.
Right now, however, I’m watching the pines flash by, deep in saccharine contemplation of my latest near miss and listening to a strong, dreamy tenor named Paul Jenkins sing “I haven’t slept since we first met / ’cause if I did I might
Music Video – Fireproof Your T.V.
Self-released
By Matt Brown
Moonlight caresses snowdrifts on either side of the tree-lined mountain highway and I’m heading into northern Arizona, riding shotgun on a bedroom furniture delivery. My day started at 7 a.m., the Tucson sun rising to find me hungover and daydreaming on my front porch. Today will end at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning, hungover again with boots crunching packed snow, staggering, smiling and exhausted through icy Flagstaff streets back to my hotel room.
Right now, however, I’m watching the pines flash by, deep in saccharine contemplation of my latest near miss and listening to a strong, dreamy tenor named Paul Jenkins sing “I haven’t slept since we first met / ’cause if I did I might forget / the funny way you looked at me…” over an overtly synthesized background. It’s capturing my melancholy sense of boyish optimism in a multimegapixel image as snowflakes the size of monkey thumbnails fling themselves against the windshield to die watery romantic deaths.
Suddenly, the most ludicrous drum machine break I’ve heard in ages shatters my trance and puts a perverse grin back on my face. A disclaimer in the liner notes for this CD, Music Video’s Fireproof Your T.V., boasts “All sounds on this recording are artificial.” The honesty and humor preserved on this recording are very human and very real.
Music Video is one hell of an unfortunate name for the aforementioned Jenkins (providing the keyboards and sequencing) and Wes McCanse (acting as engineer, programmer and guitarist). Dorky laptop rock with more than a whiff of all that Radiohead wannabe crap that bores me comatose, somehow this album has managed to keep my scattered attention for weeks. The songs are dark and witty and melodically interesting, though Paul’s lyrics often fall short when he tries to cleverly invert a tired phrase.
“Another Borderline Emergency” works for me (“If at first you don’t succeed / ignore all evidence you tried / because that which doesn’t kill you / only makes you wanna die…”), but efforts such as “Watercolors” and “Nobody’s Around”, a song actually concerning the use of cliches, leave me anxious to hear Jenkins’ future efforts as a more confident, accomplished lyricist. The quirky beauty of “Everything Up To This Point Has Been a Waste” and “Lost At Sea”, the song with that nutty drum break, give me a happy glimpse of a sparkly turquoise future for these two nifty gents.
This CD is messing with my head. I need a beer.
Let’s talk about you for a little bit… what kind of music do you like? Does this look like an album you might want to hear? Ah hell, why should I care? Write your own little life story and in return, I’ll tell you why you should get more involved with your own local music scene. Ready? It’s because at some point you’ll probably find your own cool bands with names so dumb you won’t want to admit to your friends that you dig ’em. And I’m telling you, these Music Video kids are cool. Go to their website and listen to some mp3s and tell me how wrong I am and that you hate my crappy writing (monkey thumbnails?????) and you really don’t care that I sat on my stupid porch in the morning or that I got laid or whatever in some quaint snowbound Arizona college town and hey, am I gonna finish that sandwich? Huh? Am I? Am I?
Now I’m watching the pines flash by. Life is ultimately short and sad and love always has a crappy ending. I’m listening to something I enjoy and I’m comfortable in my melancholy sense of boyish optimism for the moment. Moonlight caresses the snowdrifts as Fireproof Your T.V. finds a place on the soundtrack to my life story. – (7/10)