Thirty years later and I still want my MTV. It was music television and it once delivered on that promise, showing nonstop videos set to the latest music. Some bands were content to lipsync on stage for their videos while others went with full narrative-driven mini-movies. Still others enlightened our eyes with flopping fish and avant-garde goodness. It was impossibly entertaining to see the artists we loved reveal their songs with visual delights; But that was then.
Fortunately, Milwaukee has a thriving music scene with a ton of talented artists willing to collaborate and create music videos. Even more fortunately, the Milwaukee Film Festival chose to highlight several of these videos in The Milwaukee Music Video Show. Before a packed house Tuesday in the Oriental’s Abele Theater, Cream City rocked our eyes and ears with 15 original music videos, featuring Q&As with each and every band and filmmaker. Below are brisk impressions on each video.
Hughes Family Band – “I Don’t Mind”
DIRECTED BY RYAN THOMAS REEVE
A Big Lebowski-esque, rollicking, tumbling, bar dice odyssey through a Milwaukee evening, “I Don’t Mind” delivers on the title’s suggestion, revealing a band in its element in slamming brews and taking names. The beer bottle perspective shots let the viewer share the sensation of being slammed by a member of the Hughes Family Band.
Traore – “Africa Enough is Enough”
DIRECTED BY ENGLISH ABSOLUTE, TATE BUNKER
Shot lovingly below a Milwaukee freeway overpass with a party crew grilling out, getting down and smoking herb, this video offers a welcoming duo of sights and sounds. If you’re looking for Milwaukee’s answer to “Summertime,” this is it. During the Q&A, the artist made clear that the song is in support of Burkina Faso’s leader Ibrahim Traore.
Mie – “Freakshow”
DIRECTED BY MIE
A cool and unusual rocker, “Freakshow” is lurid with red and allure. The video shows Mie suspended upside down like an imprisoned marionette. It concludes with a post-credit scene that breaks the fourth wall, and fortunately not the neck of Mie, with a snake slowly constricting her as the director gushes over her courage. Mie shared later that the video was all about facing her fears: of snakes and of hanging upside down. Check and check.
Noah David Eckstein – “Cladosporium Coke Dial”
DIRECTED BY NOAH DAVID ECKSTEIN
If you’ve ever read Lewis Carroll or foraged the forest for specific fungi, you’ll enjoy tripping with “Cladosporium Coke Dial.” A pure geometric acid test, Eckstein’s creation pulsates with synthetic harmony. It’s a symmetrical electroshock therapy perfect for on-the-wall visuals at your next microdose get-together. Eckstein assured the crowd that the video “means whatever you want it to mean.” I’ve got my suspicions, and I’m pleased with them.
Sex Scenes – “Want & Need/Nothing”
DIRECTED BY VICTOR BUELL, HARRISON COLBY
This punk-rocking throwback to end-days ’90s MTV was filmed in black and white in a warehouse. The music is a meltdown of nihilistic release exorcizing any bad vibes. The inverted, reverse footage from the factory floor was an epic slow-mo moment, one of many that the band claimed “nail-elevated” the video. Ultimately, the quote of the night came from the directors, who said they’d look for any “excuse for a skull to vomit blood.”
Fuzzysurf – “Don’t Go Overboard”
DIRECTED BY TOMMY SIMMS
If you ever wished Mentos-era Foo Fighters made a video with music that sounds more like The Shins and Tame Impala, Fuzzysurf has a boat to launch for you. Their video is mixed-media affair of live-action that transits smoothly into stop-motion animation. The visuals suggest Robert Altman’s Popeye and a dash of Taika Waititi’s Our Flag Means Death, in a very good way. Appropriately, the video was shot during last August’s flood.
Caley Conway – “Singing Never”
DIRECTED BY JOSH EVERT
Enter through the picture frame to a woozy and lovely VHS dream within a dream, in which impressionistic harmonies fold in on themselves like a love letter our children will open but never fully understand. What? Yeah, that’s what I got out of the wondrous audio-visual melding between Conway and director Josh Evert. Conway said the song was inspired by both her “sensation of [her] own mortality” and by her grandmother’s onset of dementia, during which she’d forget common facts but spontaneously recall melodies from “automatic memory.” My personal fave from the festival showing.
Creature Weather – “Phantom Face”
DIRECTED BY NELS LINDQUIST
A 16mm black-and-white romp around Bay View, “Phantom Face” blends terror and humor in equal measure. A man outraces an apparition through the Avalon Theater’s lobby for a quick bucket of popcorn as the band tears through this reverberation-heavy rocker. A cool twist toward the end of the video should satisfy those not already charmed by the synthy rave-up. Director Nels Lindquist claimed the band provided him a “psychotic bullet-point” list of ideas for the video, which culminates with paranormal popcorn possibilities.
Jondo Jordan – “Delusions”
DIRECTED BY JONATHAN TURNER
“Only you can make me feel this way…” This line will bounce hauntingly through your brain as you begin to realize just what Jondo Jordan means by how he feels. After this suffocatingly sumptuous visual experience that ricochets between the padded walls of institutional delusion and sunflower fields of the mind, the crowd burst into applause. Artfully shot by Jonathan Turner, the video suggests an inescapability, brought home by a memorable final frame.
The Taxmen – “Without You”
DIRECTED BY PETER BOROWSKI
A Beatles-esque confection that rolls around Milwaukee on the coldest day of the year, “Without You” blares from the rooftops with friends coming together over popsicles – ironic as the band reported that the weather was decidedly too frozen for fun. Hard to tell from their fab video, which occasionally lends “Hard Day’s Night” energy to the big screen, highlighted by an innocent, infectious joy. The Taxmen moonlight as an accomplished Beatles cover band.
Health Club – “Banjo Song”
DIRECTED BY RYAN NELS PONTILLO
Take a ride with “Banjo Song.” This jaunty collaboration sends Health Club on another MKE exploration, featuring great shots of the singer on a bicycle carefully delivering lyrics directly to the camera. Having filmed on the hottest day of the year, the band and director sweat together to create a loving ode to romance and our fair city.
Autumn Maria Reed – “Little Heart Warrior”
DIRECTED BY ALEX BOYES
How about some operatic singing set to a child’s drawings, based on the words the same child wrote while hospitalized for a heart problem, all backed by a beating heart and spare piano? Yes, indeed. It’s a moving mini-movie that’s a testament to the power of community collaboration, bringing together a child’s imagination, Milwaukee Opera Theatre and the Medical College of Wisconsin into one song of hope.
Mol Sullivan – “Dog”
DIRECTED BY MOL SULLIVAN
A moody movement touched with reverb-y Americana twang and direct lyrics relating to Sullivan’s dog Auggie, who survived a fire in her Cincinnati home. The video is filmed in the burned-out husk of the home where Auggie had been resuscitated. Shot in black and white with long looks into Mol’s eyes, the video radiates intensity and uncertainty. Sullivan now makes Milwaukee her home, along with her partner, Josh, who shot the video.
Seances – “Forgiveness”
DIRECTED BY ERIC ARSNOW
Let’s meet at the light tower for some midnight forgiveness with Seances. Wait, is that a good idea? It sure is, especially if you’re looking for some propulsive guitar and spectral background voices that help you climb the stairs to the top of the tower even faster. In the video, a long-haired phantasma recently drowned in the rocky seas and searches a haunted house party. Marrying form and function is never easy, but this animated video flows freely in all directions.
oak you – “pangea pt. 3 (hibernation)”
DIRECTED BY COLE QUAMME
The epic show-closer left the audience in confused appreciation for the full scope of sound and vision. With a sprawling visual of an upside-down mouth singing lyrics along with a woman in perpetual disentanglement (and re-entanglement), the audio-visual jigsaw put together a narrative with more question marks than periods. The director indicated in the post-show Q&A that the piece is meant to be played in its entirety at a gallery, on a perpetual loop, which actually makes more sense than the format we viewed at the Oriental. Keep an eye open for whatever exhibition features this work, as it is worth seeing and hearing in its intended format.
