Chosen by DJ Astrocreep
It’s not often we have more than one winner for our Video of the Week award, but this week we have been unable to decide between three! With such quality song going alongside wonderfully fitting videos meant it would have been grossly unfair to leave any of the three out – so, we decided to spoil you and let you make up your own minds as to which you prefer…
First off, we have Lionize, a funk ‘n’ roll outfit that we have covered numerous times here on ÜR. Indeed, their last single, ‘Loneliest Whale’, was a VOTW at the end of June. Their latest effort, ‘Heavy On My Mind’, is taken from their forthcoming new album, ‘Panic Attack!’, which is due to be released on 18 October via their own Electric Reckoning Music. A soft, psychedelic blues number that you just can’t help but play over and over again, like the rest of the album it features Clutch’s Jean-Paul Gaster on drums:
Next up, we have another ÜR fave in the form of up and coming alt-rock outfit Puppy, who have been championed by a couple of our contributors. Taken from the ÜR-approved debut album ‘The Goat‘, their new single, ‘Poor Me’, is a grunge-like effort with hooks and a big chorus that is at times reminiscent of Alice In Chains – big praise indeed!
Billy Price, Puppy drummer and director/editor of the ‘Poor Me’ video, says of the clip:
“Going into this video we wanted to try make a kind of nonsensical YouTube tutorial-cum-pound land Ted Talk. There’s a lot of content online (and elsewhere) that presents incredibly complex information as being very simple and easy. But, whether it’s taking apart a laptop with your bare hands, or curing insomnia through breathing exercises, a lot of these kinds of tasks are actually quite difficult to do. Certainly for us as a band anyway. But whilst you might never really optimise your wellbeing or fix the weird sound coming out of your amp or whatever, it can be kind of satisfying watching someone else fix these deeply intricate things with a Zen-like ease. It’s somehow quite calming. Anyway, with this in mind, we wanted to try approach the lyrical and tonal themes of ‘Poor Me’ with the energy of a YouTuber conveying wildly elaborate instructions to a totally confused viewer. The resultant video may not be of any practical use at all, but it might serve as some useful distraction. Or maybe even be somehow quite calming.”
To complete our triumvirate for the week, we have yet another ÜR-approved artist, in the form of the MMA-fighter-turned-guitarist Kris Barras and his band, with their new single, ‘What You Get’, which is an old school style blues rock track, with a host of cameos from the likes of Jonny Lang, Walter Trout, Eric Gales, Kenny Aronoff, Joe Louis Walker and more in the video to boot!
Speaking about the song, Barras explains: “I’d say that this is probably the most typical KBB song on the album. It summarises the sound that I have become known for; foot-stomping, twangy riffs and a big, catchy chorus. We’ve been playing this song live for the past six months and it always goes down really well. People were hearing it for the first time and they’re all singing along by the time it reaches the last chorus. That’s when we knew it had to be a single”
KBB’s new album, ‘Light It Up’, will be released via the Mascot Group on 13 September.