Watch the New Video for Frog Eyes’ “The Sensitive Girls”

 
This afternoon Stereogum premiered the new, animated video for Frog Eyes’ “The Sensitive Girls” by London-based, Russian artist Marsha Balaeva. For Balaeva, “what attracted [her] most was the theme of urban gloom and despair, where everything you look at is palpably wrong and menacing, yet fascinating in some way.”

The animation itself is fully hand-drawn and is made from just under a thousand drawings in ink and pencils. This was the first animation project Balaeva has done in color. At the beginning of the collaboration, Carey Mercer outlined his vision of this song, a mixture of “street despair”, faux-religious imagery, and the dream of fleeing dark places. This loose outline gave her the main theme for the storyline. He also came up with the finishing sequence, when the bird is flying out into the light of a crystal pyramid.

The majority of the city backdrops are based on actual streets and buildings of Liverpool, Manchester and London. A lot of the characters and objects can be traced back to various religious cults and practices, like the dog with the pins. In Kongo, wooden figurines of dogs and men were used by ‘baganga’ (healers) to perform rituals, and if themagic was successful a nail was added to it, so the most powerful objects were studded with nails.

For more information on Marsha Balaeva’s artwork, please visit visit her site here.

One of our favorite Canadian music channels, AUX.TV, recorded a great in-depth interview with Carey Mercer in which he discusses music, poetics, and where Frog Eyes fits in the artistic spectrum. The second video features an incredibly moving, acoustic version of “Violent Psalms.” Both videos are part of AUX.TV’s interview and performance series “What You See Is What You Get,” and you can see those and more here.

Frog Eyes’ Carey Mercer Shares Live Blackout Beach Album on Bandcamp

Carey Mercer is best known as the songwriter and vocalist of the band Frog Eyes. However, Mercer also releases solo recordings as Blackout Beach and is one third of the Canadian supergroup Swan Lake. Although Frog Eyes are widely known for their explosive live shows, Swan Lake has never once performed live, and Blackout Beach has played in public just one time. This live album, titled Live at the Orange Hall is a document of Blackout Beach’s only live performance and can be purchased via bandcamp for just $2.99.

Frog Eyes’ Paul’s Tomb: A Triumph Included on Long List for 2010 Polaris Prize

Paul’s Tomb: A Triumph, the Dead Oceans debut from Victoria, British Columbia’s Frog Eyes has been included on the long list for the 2010 Polaris Prize. Congratulations to Carey Mercer and the band for this most excellent achievement.  See the rest of the Polaris Prize long list here.

Frog Eyes are currently on tour and recently added a stretch of dates with Japandroids for later this fall. The Frog Eyes live show must not be missed. Here are the full dates.

Frog Eyes Embark on Conquest of North America

From now through the month of June, the Pride of Victoria, British Columbia — Frog Eyes — will be airing the well-read, raw psychedelia found on the band’s Dead Oceans debut, Paul’s Tomb: A Triumph, across this fine continent of ours. As anyone who has crossed paths with this musical beastie knows, Frog Eyes’ shows are primal, otherworldly and maybe as close to a pop music enema as many of us will ever get.

Tour dates HERE.

It’s fitting, then, that just as Frog Eyes hits the highway for tour that Carey Mercer take a moment to wax poetic on the city that the band calls home. His brilliant, heartfelt essay on Victoria, British Columbia for Aquarium Drunkard’s Off the Record series is something to behold. Mercer gives us the good, the bad and the ugly of Victoria, calling it a “city for the belly”:

My city is not a city for the mind, and not even a city for the body, but in fact it is a city for the belly.

Think of Falstaff: his coarse gut-tunic is stained with mussel juice and pernod, and he is crocked and delirious on some coriander-ed wheat ale, brewed just minutes from where he now holds court. His mouth spews local-lamb gristle and roasted turnip, and his sleeve is encrusted with the many translucent shells of spot prawn. And then he spies and smells a fresh platter of Chanterelles swimming in butter and duck fat. His tongue curls around his salted and greased cheeks: he is so laminated in oils and pates and jellies that he could easily eat himself. Blackberries stain his chin. Salmon bones hang like forgotten combs in his curled hair. He cannot possibly eat enough.

Wow, right? With that kind of high-lit writing prowess, many have wondered if a side career in letters is something Mercer has considered. But as Mercer told the Portland Mercury recently in a feature to preview Frog Eyes’ upcoming visit, his true place in this world — thank the rawk gawds — is on stage with mighty axe in hand:

Frog Eyes remains unique in Mercer’s ability to fit so many ideas—both lyrical and music—into his songs, which despite their strangeness are actually quite warm and welcoming. “I could become, like, a noise guy who gets paid to go play artist-run centers,” says Mercer of the alternatives to indie rock. “Maybe I could read a poem. But that doesn’t seem as appealing to me as playing in front of 30 awkward teenagers in Boise, Idaho.”

Well said, Mr. Mercer. See you out there.