By Vaness B
London alt-rock band The Miller Test share their official video for “Southend Vic“, the fascinating second single from the band’s acclaimed Dead Blue album, alongside their top 5 influences playlist.
Hypnotic, ethereal vocals over rainy guitars and effusive electronic drums on this intriguing track that sounds like a Bonham-sampling Portishead or a druggier, feminised Radiohead.
The accompanying music video depicts an aptly eery seaside nightmare sequence, with its bright yellow fisherman garb and vocalist Emma/Suki in a pantomime clown getup offsetting the tense, cloudy and foreboding atmosphere, shot on location in Leigh-on-sea.
Check it out below, as well as the band’s selection of their top 5 musical influences and what they love about them.
Deelite, Groove Is In The Heart
One of those song-and-video combinations that, like Strawberry Fields, is so absolutely of its time that you can’t quite believe how well everything still stands up today. Astronomical, as the man says.
Christine and The Queens, La Marcheuse
The laid-back but oh-so-kicking beat, the sense of monumental space, her voice floating over everything as she walks, braless and beautiful, through deserted villages dressed as a female matador… And that bull! Just gorgeous, and, because it’s CATQ, perfectly choreographed. The ending is brilliantly touching, so uplifting, so sad.
Bob Dylan, Subterranean Homesick Blues
Usually you can hear influences in even the most avant garde music, but somehow this seems utterly sui generis. Arguably the first music video? Unarguably good enough for Gillian Wearing to make an entire career from it. What’s Ginsberg ranting at Bob Neuwirth about though, that’s what we all want to know.
Jacques Brel – Amsterdam (Live Les Adieux à l’Olympia)
An unbelievably perfect combination of passion and irony, and a performance that’s electrically expressive, literally to the very fingertips. “He’ll piss like I cry on an unfaithful love” is just the most fantastically, sordidly, vivid lyric, it gets me every time.
MC5 – Tartar Field, July 1970
Are you ready to testify?! Are you ready?! I give you a testimonial…
