In 2006, a Dutch filmmaker named David Kleijwegt made a TV documentary called ‘The Eternal Children‘ about the kooky sisters CocoRosie . It connected their music and petulant refusal to behave like sensible grownups with other musicians, including Devendra Banhart, William Basinski and Anthony & The Johnsons.
Six years on, something of the innocence and freshness of the New Weird America has faded but it seems to me that there are many artists who still want to preserve and promote a sense of childlike wonder both in the music they make and the tie-in visuals they commission. This is not so surprising when the alternative is the cynical adult marketing behind the crude bump and grind of MTV videos.
This fact struck me again when watching the beautiful animation by Crush Creative to Jónsi‘s Gathering Stories, a song from the latest Cameron Crowe movie We Bought A Zoo.
You can see the same spirit pervading the images in Ólafur Arnalds’ Hægt, kemur ljósið (directed by Esteban Diácono) from the Icelander’s 2010 album: ‘…and they have escaped the weight of darkness’.
You can then compare these with an older tune – The Lake by Antony and the Johnsons, a wonderful tune based on a poem by Edgar Allen Poe and animated by Adam Shecter.
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