The Mountain Goats are just a few weeks away from the release of new album Getting Into Knives, which arrives on October 23 through Merge. Although John Darnielle’s project has been prodigiously consistent throughout its run, including three albums in the last few years, it was with 2015’s “The Legend of Chavo Guerrero” that they last put out an official music video – that is, until this week when they shared the clip for recent single “Get Famous”.
And for their first video in half a decade, they’ve created something that will have no trouble bringing a smile to your face, as we watch bobblehead versions of John Darnielle, Matt Douglas, Peter Hughes, and Jon Wurster realise their true calling and come together to form a bobblehead band. This wasn’t always the plan for the video though, as the clip’s co-writer and director David Hollander revealed to Rolling Stone:
“I met John for tea in Chinatown before his show at East River Park last summer. He was bouncing out of his shoes with all sorts of ideas, in a really fecund period... We finally settled on a simple narrative, wrote the script for the video, and then learned a few days later that John and the guys were wisely not coming out to Los Angeles during the Southern California surge. We already had a bobblehead that was up to no good in the original script and we came to the conclusion that the bobbleheads would take over completely. Like John, I was nervous about how to gives those weird novelty items human dynamics, but the minute we started to roll the film at 120 fps and then slowed those bop-alongs down to the music’s beats per minute…we all knew that we could depend on them to carry the narrative.“
Darnielle adds: “I wasn’t sure if bobbleheads could really capture that level of giddy anxiety, but David’s visions play for keeps – the first time I saw the camera resolve on my bobblehead in a way that made it look like it had changed its expression, I almost fell out of my chair. Proud to have a video this left-field for our dark little song.”
Watch the great video for “Get Famous” below.
The Mountain Goats’ new album Getting Into Knives comes out on October 23 through Merge. You can find the band on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
