It’s a shame that throughout the net, among the blogosphere, and on the scene you’ll find nary a whisper when it comes to BRMC. If i hadn’t taken a chance on them when I happened upon Howl in the used bin over at Amoeba in L.A. (and recalled the recommendation from the punks over at Buddyhead) I never would’ve been blessed with what is to me some damn good dirty, southern, adult rock. In this time of intellectual, artsy, polished pop music, Howl exists alone, marinated in the barrels of old bootlegger moonshine and saturated with the ashes and smoke from the butts of unfiltered Marlboro Reds.

I’d like to applaud the band’s (and label’s?) decision to go through with this shot just as much as I applaud Mehling’s handling of the entire work. He could’ve made plenty of mistakes with the nudity and violence by softening the scenes or making caricatures of them, instead, however, he was up front with them. For example, when we see the bodies of the tricks, Mehling disconcerns himself with the obvious attention that the nudity garners (in such a safe medium) and just blows past it by showing the men and women involved in extremely frank and sexual situations from the pleasure of sex, to self-grooming, or even just walking around, because that’s what would really happen at a brothel. It’s the difference between a teenager seeing nudity (excited and preoccupied with it) versus an adult (who’s experienced and can get over such things). This is a main problem I have with many mainstream hip-hop videos, we’ve seen it all before so we’re over the whole T&A imagery, either do something different with it or move on.

Mehling (AKA an ex-bassist for The Brian Jonestown Massacre) has done two things here. Not only does he give respect to the audience as adults with the chosen subject matter, but more importantly, he respects the song as music/art for adults. Placing the video within the confines of a Ukraine brothel, though wise, still constituted a substantial risk with regards to airtime among most music video outlets. Yes it contains nudity, violence, blasphemous religious imagery and the like, still it should be noted that (as I’ve been alluding to this entire post) this music isn’t for kids and as a consequence neither is the video.

This isn’t the newest shot off of Howl, that belongs to Plates Animation for “Weight of the World.” I posted this in its stead, however, because of how Mehling weds the song with the shot almost flawlessly, much like Gondry did with the White Stripes Lego-rific “Fell In Love With A Girl”, Jonze and the Beastie Boys’ down ‘n’ dirty “Sabatoge”, or Coppola with the Strokes’ Tron inspired shot for “12:51″. Videos of this caliber are found devastatingly few and far between so give thanks to whomever/whatever it is that such a shot like this exists. Now, lock the kids up and keep an eye out for the boss as you peep this, and when its all over, I expect reactions from each and everyone of you, I wanna know what you all think…

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – “Ain’t No Easy Way”
Directed by Charles Mehling

Censored Air-friendly Version

(Uncensored)
Quicktime 7 (iPod compatible: 30.5 MB)

Amp Camp doesn’t have it, so Buy it Here (courtesy of Amazon.com)