Back in the late 2000’s (that always sounds weird), after getting laid off from my somewhat surreal gig at MTV News Online, I landed a permalancer postion at MSN.com, Microsofts’s online portal.The whole notion of an “internet portal” always seemed weird to me. Nine times out of ten, whenever I fired up ye olde internet, I usually had a specific destination in mind, but MSN was for PC-usin’ people who, evidently, were cool with just reading the first thing that literally popped on their screen when they launched their browser. In any case, I snagged a job as a homepage editor there, crafting pithy headlines and the like. It wasn’t exactly edgy or cool, but it was a solid-ish gig when I needed it to be, and I worked with some very nice people.
Among those people was a cat I’ve mentioned here before named Drew K. Drew and I instantly hit it off when someone brought to our mutual attention that we were both somewhat insufferably pretentious music jerks. Though a good ten years my junior, Drew harbored a comparable adoration for vintage hardcore punk. Once that was established, you could throw Drew and I on a shift for hours on end, and neither of us could shut up about various esoteric band-and-record citations.
Beyond our combined love of NYHC outfits like the Cro-Mags and Agnostic Front and storied D.C. crews like Minor Threat and S.O.A., Drew was deeply steeped in an encyclopedic fixation with all stripes of contemporary indie rock. As a result, where I was able to hip him to several punk and post-punk bands from before his era, he turned me onto more newer bands that I could ever quantify. Ironically, I came to appreciate more genuinely new music from working with Drew at MSN than I did in my two years at MTV News Online, where I only really learned the names of countless hip-hop acts I continue to largely not care about.
Anyway, this windy preamble is only to set the stage for the clip below, which is by a band called the Dirty Projectors. The Dirty Projectors were among countless other hipster acts – like Yeasayer, Les Savvy Fav, Be Your Own Pet, Au Revoir Simone, Vampire Weekend, Deerhunter, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Mew, Deerhoof, The XX, The Submarines, Cat Power, Jay Reatard, Little Dragon, The Ting Tings, Phoenix, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Papercuts, Chair Lift, Beach House, Cold Cave, Grizzly Bear, Surfer Blood, The Eddie Current Suppression Ring, Matt & Kim, Peter Bjorn & John, Broken Bells, Skye Ferreria and frankly way the Hell more I’ve since forgotten – that Drew rapturously turned me onto.
If I’m being honest, while I made a playlist on my iPod (fucking bite me) of the recommendations Drew had given me way back when, I cannot remember the title of the Dirty Projectors song I took a liking to. Don’t look to me for this sort of intel.
Here, meanwhile, is their newest one. I have no idea of it’s a radical departure from their normal stuff, nor does it really matter. I liked this clip in that it’s shot entirely in New York City. That might sound like a rigorouos cliché, but with the exception of some arfful shots on the Staten Island Ferry, most of the locations featured herein (the elevetor to the Second Avenue Subway line, the Occulus, the Vessel, the Fulton Center and the deeply shitty “supertall” at 432 Park Avenue), are all mostly new landmarks.
Enjoy.
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