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The purpose of music videos is generally a little lost on me. A few artists have done genuinely interesting things with them -- I have a soft spot for the paranoia in Nirvana's old video work, for instance, and the sheer weirdness of Modest Mouse's new videos justifies their existence pretty effectively. Not to mention the bizarre thrill of seeing a face as thoroughly unsuited to television as Isaac Brock's ugly mug all over MTV. But for the most part, it seems like the idea is that you get to find out whether or not your favorite musicians are cute. For bonus points, you can screen capture the fuck out of the video and make a bunch of adorable livejournal icons -- Chris Carrabba for when you're feeling pouty, Davey Havok for when you're feeling sexy/vagina-y. I don't know.
The good news is that, while I'm a little too heterosexual to really give a detailed report on the attractiveness of the various, samey emo and screamo bands on Homesick, my hunch is that the emo chicks out there will dig them. They're a bunch of vaguely smarmy looking boys with all manner of sloppy, inexplicable hairdos and vaguely out of style clothing. I'll go into more detail below, based on the theory that that's really all that matters.
A Static Lullaby are one of the less sexy bands here. Singer Joe Brown has a sort of mullet thing going on that is really unfortunate, and the redheaded guitarist guy hasn't got his guitar face ready. Fortunately for them, their video is a pretty strong start -- they play their spazztic brand of screamo under a ridiculously awesome-looking sunset that they completely deny involved any computer effects. Ultimately, this is melodramatic and sort of prima donna-ish, but, well, welcome to this DVD. Intercut with the vaguely apocalyptic shots of the band is a series of cryptic, foreboding images that imply something far more interesting than the song itself. What I really want is to see the movie the director wanted to make instead of this video.
The All-American Rejects redefine low budget with a series of clips from footage apparently taken while they were getting from place to place on tour. These clips (which effectively establish the band as being just about as cute as a goddamn button, by my estimation) eventually culminate in an actual concert recording. Their song is easily the strongest musical contribution on Homesick, successfully selling their saccharine songcraft with twinkling bells and a strong vocal showing by Tyson Ritter. You'll almost forget that the whole thing must have cost about ten dollars and a 24 pack of Mountain Dew to assemble.
The Beautiful Mistake put a lot of effort into their video, which makes it all the more tragic that it fails to evoke any sort of emotion. The band's failure to build the sort of dramatic arc upon which emo is so dependent is a big part of the problem, but equally troublesome is the video's downright stupid narrative -- it's a horror story about the dangers of the nine to five lifestyle that doesn't even really make sense. Emo sex appeal? Relatively high.
Rufio, whom I happen to have seen live, basically recreate their live show in a skate park. This means that bassist Jon Berry runs around all over the place, driving the crowd to distraction -- and while I realize that singer Scott Sellers has an irritatingly thin voice and makes really silly faces when he sings. I suspect that the sex appeal is a little higher than usual here, though, so good work on that, Rufio.
Homesick's second most awful video comes courtesy of Copeland. It's very well produced, with the band performing against a lovely cityscape, but it shoves the point that singer Aaron Marsh is cute down our throats waaay too hard, while a bizarre moment bordering on pedophilia unfolds before our eyes. I'd like to take a moment to suggest that having your singer gaze lovingly at eight year old girls is something you should avoid in the future, Copeland. That, and their song is really, really irritating, consisting almost entirely of one bland chorus.
Fallout Boy take the direct route, giving us a concert tape with lots of editing, and Every Time I Die stage a pretty solid show in a roller rink. Here we see the power of hats: Fallout Boy singer Patrick Stump chooses a baseball cap that totally messes up his hair in a lame way, while Every Time I Die singer chooses a playful hat that triples his indie sex appeal. Acceptance pull the concert video trick, too, and also win the sex appeal award. The video is absolutely chock full of portrait shots of singer Keith Buckley, who I'm pretty sure sends girls into convulsions on sight. The fact that his band is indistinguishable from a thousand other bands doesn't matter. He is, I suspect, sooo dreamy.
Armor for Sleep intercut images of a live performance with some action in an apartment and a farmland photoshoot. The whole thing is tinted aqua-green and murky as fuck, in what turns out to be a surprisingly striking visual decision -- but Armor for Sleep lose points for singer Ben Jorgensen, who tries to really play up the sex appeal angle, and, in my completely uninformed opinion, fails. It's something about his nose, I think. Good news for him: all you need is sloppy hair and a tight shirt to be hot in emo land! Which, of course, makes me wonder why I haven't started my own little Armor for Sleep yet. Big Collapse put a whole lot of money into getting themselves dug out of a lot of mud by a hot punk rock chick. Maybe it's some sort of fetish thing?
Thursday is the real loser here. Their video is overly dramatic, their music has never been anything to write home about, and it turns out their singer looks like a wino. I mean, I'm sorry, but, seriously, eeeww. It's enough to kill a perfectly good teenage crush.
I mentioned that Copeland had the second worst video, but Eighteen Visions bring us the very worst. The only band on Homesick that could not possibly be construed as emo in any way, they're a bunch of bland, boring radio rockers with a guitarist who looks like a goth Ronald McDonald. Yes, his hair is really that unfortunate. It doesn't ruin the video, though -- the problem comes from a ridiculously non-sexy lesbian love scene that constitutes the parts of the video that aren't goth Ronald McDonald headbanging. The lesbian love scene goes from unconvincing and absurdly exploitative to just plain lame when the band remembers what compilation they're on and wraps things up with a tragic twist: lesbian heartbreak followed by tragic lesbian suicide. In the commentary, the director explains the brilliant process behind the video: they actually took the drummer's ideas seriously, then got a couple of non-lesbians drunk and coerced them into making out. It was at the precise moment that one of the guys started licking the neck of his guitar that I realized I had a palpable physical hatred for this band and their video. They come off as greasy teenagers given far, far too much money and a lot of undeserved publicity.
If you're too much of a wuss to go download some actual porn, though, it's not the worst substitute I've seen.
The video with the most effort in it, though not really the best, is Mike Pappa's stylish but ridiculously low budget animated take on Sick of it All's "Relentless". I'm not exaggerating in the least when I say I've seen amateur flash animations that were three times as fluid, but his monster-filled narrative is at least pretty interesting to look at. It's rendered in a foggy style that takes cues from today's hot goth comics without going overboard. The story itself is pretty vapid, and the song is nothing special, but Pappa deserves a lot of credit for his work.
Homesick is a mixed bag, with the only band whose music I really liked turning in a ridiculously cheap video, and all the worst bands turning in the most memorable (read: memorably awful) contributions. As I said, though, the whole music video thing is a little beyond me to begin with. If you want to confirm that your favorite emo singer from the Homesick roster is hot, as long as he isn't the guy from Thursday, this is certainly a way to do that. If you do like Thursday, well, I've got some bad news for you. And if you aren't totally into emo, don't even think about it.
-- Mike Meginnis
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