Couple of notes about the series:

  • Despite my initial plan, most likely going to skip the “performer of the week” thing for at least one week after this one just so I can get more backlog out.
  • The link I copy and pasted for the all posts up until now were slightly malformed in that they came from Youtube but somehow I copy and pasted them wrong. Depending on the browser, and Youtube’s mood, it might work or might not work. Those should all be fixed now with the corrected link that shows up with this one.

It had to happen eventually but there was going to be music added to this that is not Japanese in origin. The honor goes to Durry with their 2021 song, “Loser’s Club”:

Look, I listen to a lot of Japanese Alternative Rock and Shoegaze but it’s less that it is the Japanese (though I appreciate that, as well) and more that I like a particular type of music. This morning, unrelated to this, I was trying to think up a way to describe it and this is what I came up with:

I like alternative rock music where the voice is another type of guitar and the lyrics are the right amount of ironic. Where I can listen to the lyrics closely and really enjoy them but I can also tune them out and treat the track like a instrumental with an almost subliminal sense of introspection. My favorite music is the bit where both truths are true at the same time.

Durry I think fits this. I love a lot of Durry lyrics. I love the Durry siblings’ singing. I also just like the song as a whole, as a vibe.

They have done some creative marketing and video design but for the start I thought it was good to go back five years ago to a brother-and-sister duo on a merry-go-round in what I assume is their local park. In what must of have been the waning days of COVID lockdowns and that broad hope folks were feeling in the 2021 summer. In that light, lyrics like this just resonate, you know?

I said this time last year
that we’d be gone but we’re still here
Just waiting for our turn to go
but no one seems to notice
We’re still swimming upstream with the best of us
Another summer passes by
like water through our fingers
Crow’s feet creep a little deeper,
creasing like a piece of paper
But origami never seemed so beautiful

NOTE: the “swimming upstream” line which is a bit awkwardly given in the video (and the original version of the song) does not actually feature in the album version of the song. I think it was the only cut line but honestly I have not fully double checked.

It is a shockingly simple video to make but both of them are so damned gorgeous and seem to be having so much fun.

Fun which does not forget to inject a bit of irony…

What’s the point of living
if you never strive for more?
But I’m not keeping score

This will be a bit of spoilers for the tracks I will pick but some videos that I won’t be featuring this week that tap into the “just a couple of siblings having fun” vibe if you want more of that include:

My Music Video Picks [MVP] is a series of posts highlighting various music and dance videos from Youtube. No particular schedule (sometimes lots, sometimes little). It might not even all be music or dance videos. Absolutely picked by me, though. Usually I have to like both the song and the video, but we’ll see.

You can see the most recent songs here: [Doug’s] Music Video Picks [Youtube Playlist]. Size of that list will change as the mood strikes. Playlist might contain spoilers for unpublished posts. Just enjoy.