Music Blog

Menomena has released their new video for the song "TAOS", off their latest album, Mines. Portland director and photographer Alicia Rose first put her video treatment for Menomena's song "TAOS" down on paper nearly a year ago, but for several months, the band couldn't agree whether to go ahead with it. That, combined with the ambitious scale of the concept, meant there would be about ten times she was sure that it would never happen. "I was convinced it was too insane. I was like 'My life will be easier without making this video. This video will take over my life.' And look what happened: it did!"

TAOS stands for "The Art of Seduction," and the video features Joe Haege going to the Bye and Bye on a regular basis to pick up women. Once he gets them home, however, a transformation happens. The ego gives way to the id, the "wolf covered in fleece" as Justin Harris' lyrics describe it. This "true nature" is appropriately played by the muscular Harris (a strong contrast to Haege's lanky frame), dressed as an 80's wrestling star, as are his female opponents, and all of whom best him spectacularly.

Only two weeks after the band's go-ahead on the wrestling concept, Rose assembled a cast and crew of 50 and executed the entire shoot, her largest project to date, in only two days. The first day lasted 19 hours, which started with moving and assembling a 150 piece, 20' x 20' authentic WWE wrestling ring, made of steel girders and wood, inside Harris' home. Then came the costumes and the smackdowns. The women, mostly friends of the band, had no prior wrestling experience, and so were trained on-the-fly by Portland luchador Mega Boy and his young daughter Jasmine (who can already flip her father). Harris is an experienced wrestler, and knew how to "sell" the women's hits.

VIDEO: Menomena - TAOS

MP3: Menomena - TAOS

"TAOS" is the third video Rose has unveiled this year. The first two were also by Portland musicians, Holcombe Waller and AgesandAges. For the latter, she shot a video in the St. Johns neighborhood for "Navy Parade" off their debut, Alright You Restless. It is, to a certain degree, an homage to the Decemberists' 2006 video for "16 Military Wives", in which Rose played a stereotypically unattractive lunchlady. (For "Navy Parade", she cast band member Sarah Riddle as a lunchlady, but was absolutely "making sure she was hot this time.")

"Bored of Memory" is the first of two planned videos by Rose for Holcombe Waller off his new release Into the Dark Unknown (we can expect to see one for "Baby Blue" in the not-too-distant future). Rose co-directed and co-shot the video with Waller, she using Super-8 film left over from her 2008 video for Loch Lomond, and he using an HD camera. They brought two friends out to Rooster Rock, and the concept was based on Waller and his boyfriend's first date—though not strictly, more dreamlike, impressionistic, "like a memory wrapped inside a memory." She explained that "I wanted to explore the idea of love between people who couldn't let anybody else know about it.'"

Tagged: video