Tube :: Malajube :: Montréal -40°C

As you can tell by the amount of Tube posts here at the IndieRocket, we like some music videos. I even go so far as to DVR Suberranean, MTV2's attempt to shove one tiny hour a week of indie rock in the worst possible time slot. As it is with most things, 90% of the videos are shrug-worthy, with a handful of good videos and a rare few brilliant offerings. Over the last year, the big trend in indie rock videos has been animated videos. Subterranean played so many that they got complaints, and deservedly so. You couldn't watch one episode without seeing at least three videos where there were little cartoon caricatures of the band, cute animal things that eventually got killed in horrible ways, or nonsense psychedelic stuff that had little to do with the song and more to do with making some motion graphics designer's resume a little thicker. They were generally poorly animated and completely lacking in anything that might resemble imagination.

I was almost ready to immediately start fast-forwarding through any animated video that popped up. Luckily, I didn't do that when this little gem by Malajube came on. Off their IndieRocket-approved album Trompe-L'Oeil, 'Montréal -40°C' was one of my favorite Malajube tracks and has ended up being my favorite video of the year so far despite the fact that - 1. It's animated. 2. It occasionally falls into all three of the animated video stereotypes that I mentioned above. However, the animation is incredible, and it's chock full of imagination. The blend of real-world and animation, the art style, and yes, even the cute little caricatures of the band (I want little tattoos of them!) are too brilliant for words. Perhaps the plethora of crap animated videos has made me appreciate this video more than I normally would, but damn, I love it, and you will, too. Hats off to the director NuFilms' Louis-Philippe Eno, who also did a so-cute-it-hurts video for Islands' 'Rough Gem'.