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Picking Up The Slack For MTV: Phoenix


Back before the recording industry pulled the pin on their hand grenade and dropped it down their pants and the Madison Avenue moneymen wrecked MTV, big splashy music videos always preceded the release of a hotly anticipated album. Those were the days. Needless to say, the music and media landscape has changed for the worse, and we just don't get to enjoy the pleasures of the big splashy and nakedly promotional music video and the fanfare that accompanied them (world premieres! midnight premieres! midnight premieres preceded by music video marathons!) anymore. Or do we? 

 No, or course we don't. I was just playing with you using a cheap rhetorical device. Hell, MTV killed of 120 Minutes for the second time, successfully purging their airwaves of music videos worth a damn. But, the spirit of that bygone era survives and has found expression in Phoenix's video for "Entertainment," the lead single off their upcoming fourth album Bankrupt! This has it all: a concept, special effects, cinematic photography, love, violence, multiple levels of meaning, animals, explosions, and burning artistic ambition. The only thing it doesn't have is the band itself, who only appear briefly in the video on a concert poster, which is entirely cool and, like everything else in the video, very tasteful. This is a proper music video, and definitely deserving of a midnight world premiere.


Bankrupt!, the first album from Phoenix since 2009's Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, arrives in stores April 23rd. In all likelihood, it will be the album of the summer, at least for people with taste in music.
Cliff Parks

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