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Video: Camphor: "Castaway"

Max Avery Lichtenstein, the singer and songwriter behind New York-based chamber-pop group Camphor, has made a name for himself composing music for independent films, among them 2005's The King, which starred Gael García Bernal. And sure enough, the spaghetti Western guitars, mariachi horns, and rumbling percussion of "Castaway", from Camphor's full-length debut, Drawn to Dust, cry out for visual accompaniment. Wild guess, though: Lichtenstein's film work-- which also includes 2003's Tarnation and 1999's Jesus' Son-- probably hasn't yet called for scoring a Treasure Island-like scene acted out by Playmobil toys.

The clip, directed by Lichtenstein and Regan Avery, presents sumptuously detailed Playmobil romance, death, and derring-do to go along with Camphor's dark, lush pirate song. "A castaway girl in a pirated world/ A scar and a curse from her mouth to her wrist/ I fell for her castaway kiss," Lichtenstein booms, then offers up a dramatic electric guitar fill. His gruff baritone amid all this instrumentation sounds a bit like Nick Cave kidnapped by Sufjan Stevens on the high seas. Camphor? More like Camph-arr, mateys. Aye?

[from Drawn to Dust; out now on Friendly Fire]

Posted by Marc Hogan on Thu: 04-03-08: 03:05 PM CDT | Digg this article | Add to del.icio.us | Permalink
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