White Flight (aka Justin Roelofs) returns1 with a video for Great Gold off his self-titled debut album. If you hadn’t noticed, we threw the track Pastora Divine on our September podcast. This subsequently caused me to give the album a few more whirls on the iPod for the first time since its release. With the passage of time I’ve learned one thing: this album slays. The more I listen, the better it gets. Because of this, I thought I’d give you a little White Flight combo, showcasing the new video for Great Gold as well as an older video for the track the Condition, which may be my favorite song on the album. See me on the White Flight train? The one that’s just pulling out of the station? Well grab your ticket, jump on, and get while gettings good.
For the uninitiated, White Flight has a very unique sound. This is clear as soon as a description is attempted. Seemingly disjoint words such as “folk”, “art”, “noise”, “funk”, “dance”, “indie”, and even “hip-hop” all get thrown around. There’s really only one other artist who evokes the same scattered description: Beck. While differences abound, Beck proves to be an appropriate comparison point to help the unacquainted. The common thread is that both men like to to take the very earthy, DIY folk-rock ethic and apply it with an electronic production firmly rooted b-boy hip-hop style sampling. The end result proves a bit unsettling due to a lack of well-defined genre boundaries, but ultimately proves endearing and catchy because so much attention to detail is given to the cornucopia of sounds. Upon careful inspection, you realize that there is nothing really “random” or “experimental” going on here: every boom, beep, and twang has a purpose.
Focusing on visuals, Great Gold is in many ways the modern day anti-video. There are no clever visual gimmicks. There are no people. It doesn’t play out like a short film. It’s animated, and poorly. Joe everyman is not going to see this video and suddenly get hyped on White Flight. This minimalism highlights a seemingly forgotten aspect of music video production. How do you visually represent music? How do you take a song and turn it into a visual? This is definitely a loftier goal than simply making something “cool” to go along with a song. Viewed from this angle, it’s clear that the vast majority of music videos are completely separate works from the songs on which they are based. In a way, the vast majority of music videos are cop-outs. The song does its thing, the video does its own thing, and hopefully the two make good like peanut-butter and jelly.
The video for Great Gold concentrates on this forgotten aspect. It’s abstract and messy and repetitive and it lacks narrative but you know what: so does the song itself. Songs are primarily about two things: telling a story and expressing emotion. The two are separable. Emotion isn’t always flashy and polished and it doesn’t always make sense. Great Gold reminds us of that.
White Flight - Great Gold by Brendan Costello
Flash, via Range Life Records
Quicktime 7 (iPod compatible), via SRO
The Condition, on the other hand, is the complete opposite. The gimmick of the Condition is that it pretends to be the opening to a soap opera (Dallas, specifically). What this means is that a bunch of friends of Brendan Costello and Justin Roelofs (presumably) get to dress up and act out silly soap opera moments. There are two problems with this approach. 1) not too many people are into Dallas these days, so the whole gimmick doesn’t even make sense to most people, let alone work. 2) The silly factor rests on the fact that these are all friends/acquaintance of the artist/director/label. So while it may be fun to see former bandmate Adrianne Verhoeven pretend to be a soap-opera star, most of the world aren’t in on the joke, so it just seems like a bunch of D grade acting. Further, this whole silly soap-opera send up just doesn’t fit the emotion of the song. I love the song, but the video just sells it short.
The saving grace of the video for this trick is, ironically, its failure in concept. The video was a silly and campy little romp and quite honestly the last sort of thing I expected to be associated with the sound on this album. Everything I have seen and heard about Mr. Roelofs, combined with the abstract brilliance of his record, had me convinced he was the overly-conceptual, free-spirit artist type (There’s no way around it: the man looks exactly like Jesus). Great Gold jives with this, but The Condition just comes of nowhere. Knowing that Justin doesn’t take himself so seriously that he wouldn’t put out a video just so his friends could goof around gives him a gleam of endearment that can make or break you when you are operating on the fringes like he is. He may not have made it to first base, but I still respect the man for attempting the bunt2.
White Flight - The Condition by Brendan Costello
Quicktime, via Range Life Records
Quicktime 7 (iPod compatible), via SRO
Buy the Album as a digital download from Range Life Records.
It’s $7.49 and comes with a “Making of White Flight” movie and a high quality digital booklet. Best deal ever.
- No rumors, no failed attempts at comedy: This post is to make sure White Flight gets the attention he deserves. No hard feelings, Justin?
- One question about the Condition, Justin: what the hell are you singing between “all night” and “white flight”? It sounds like Scooby-Doo saying “And I realize” (And I ri-rize, raggy!). It’s fun, but it’s totally ruining my ability to sing along in the shower.
compelling, in a scribbly sort of way. great track.
ps: i liked pastora so much i crossposted it (eek!)
I’ll give it up for both songs but neither video.
Listen Liiion! I love his voice
While the animation is minimal in its approach and concept, I do agree that it works well with the song.
The other one, while “hokey”, still works for me. I did read that Justin has been out of the country for some time, so I can forgive him for not being present in the video. Still, for one of the more playful songs on the album, I think the video also captures the songs energy in some strange way. And when you consider the history Adrianne Verhoeven had with Justin, her appearance in the video seems like a “fuck off” to all those naysayers (i.e. the last post on this blog).
Anyways, I’m glad Justin doesn’t take himself serious all the time. All that heady talk about the mayan calender and the non-existent self gets a little old. Glad to see he still has a sense of humor.