Joyce Manor “Drainage/If I Needed You There”
If you’re familiar with Joyce Manor, then you know how they run their little shindig: fast paced pop punk songs that leave you wanting more. Thus, you could imagine the menial surprise there was when out of the blue, they announced the release of their first music video. The video was made for the songs “Drainage” and “If I Needed You There”, and by a fan of Joyce Manor no less. The fan, Grandson And Son, reached out to the band about his project and the band loved it so much that they made it official. As you’d expect, the video is fast, dark and just as you think you’ve got some kind of grasp on the theme behind the video—it’s over. The video fits the songs quite well, playing some scrambled home video clips to the slow melody of “Drainage” and then suddenly into a harder, faster ensemble of concert clips with Barry spewing the lyrics of “If I Needed You There” into a crowd. While I’m not the biggest fan of the latter song, the video captures its harsh, chaotic tone really well and in the end I’m not surprised that it came from a fellow fan.
Title Fight “Secret Society”
Recently Title Fight released their latest album, Floral Green, and with it came a new, adapted sound. Only a few weeks later the band released their first video off the new album for their song “Secret Society”.I’m a huge fan of their song “Society” off of their previous album, “Shed”, and the aforementioned follows the same theme so I was naturally pretty excited to see what they had come up with. When I saw that the video was listed for mature viewers on YouTube, I was a little surprised, a feeling which was only furthered by the appearance of a young girl riding her bike down the street. The video continues with the same low quality home video style that their video for their song “27” had, but the production value is great. As for the video’s subject: her feelings get hurt and she takes a murderous revenge on the boy of her dreams. It’s shocking, unexpected and overall a great fit for the song. Title Fight is currently touring the US.
Balance & Composure “Quake”
Don’t be alarmed if you start to hear more of Balance & Composure in daily conversation, now that they’re on tour with Circa Survive, Touché Amore and O’Brother, you’re bound to be hearing more from them. B&C made a decent splash with the release of their latest EP and album, Separation and their sound only continues to improve and impress with every release. Now, a little more than a year later, they released the first music video for the album, “Quake”. The video fits the mood of the song quite well, changing quickly from intense verses to the slow, melancholy lulls in between. However, as far as music videos go, there isn’t all that much to look at. While the plate looks nice, there isn’t a lot to chew and it gets stale awfully fast. The backdrops are dreary, and seeing the band members drag body bags around definitely fits the song to some extent but in the end, don’t count on it to leave you thinking: you’re better off just listening to the song on its own.