Helen already wrote about Moby and Wayne Coyne making a video together in Los Angeles, but now that the video is out, let’s enjoy it! She though these two pompous pricks were made for each other! Me? I like them, especially Wayne because the Flaming Lips are not your average band, they could have gone mainstream with the Yoshimi stuff but instead they have released albums more and more puzzling like ‘Embryonic’ and more recently ‘The Terror’, nobody can accuse them to have sold out! Moby, err, I am less sure, but this new collaboration with Wayne Coyne ‘The Perfect Life’ tells me he wants to become the next Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.
It’s all about inspiring gospelic choirs, soaring voices ending up in the celebratory mode of a love fest with hippie people dancing and skating around multicolor ribbons on a rooftop! In the video, the two guys are dressed up as if they had lost their Mexican mariachi band – a costume probably chosen because of the festive nature of the music – as they walk on Broadway, downtown Los Angeles, take the Angels Flight up on Bunker Hill, while surrounded by the strangest characters such as the ‘S&M gimp rhythmic gymnast’, ‘2 obese bearded bikers in red speedos’, and ‘eight roller-skating ghosts’. This exact casting call was posted on Moby’s Facebook and apparently he had no problem to find the eclectic crowd.
It’s a glorious anthem, all the way throughout the song, and depending of your mood, it will make you want to climb that rooftop with them or vomit a bit in your mouth, as ‘The perfect life is all we need’ is repeated over and over… such non sense when you think about it! Angelinos have a strange relationship with downtown Los Angeles, I personally like it but it’s very different from New York City! However, this video restores it in all its strange glory with its Armenian jewelry stores, Mexican pawnshops, abandoned movie palaces, fifthly alleys, colorful characters and modern cool buildings. A totally perfect place indeed.