This Is How You Do It

Sure, Justin Timberlake may have a career that sells out Madison Square Garden, allows him to win multiple Grammys, and gives him the opportunity to make out with both Cristina Ricci and Scarlett Johansson; but the sad fact of the matter is the dude just got shown up by a bunch of nerds from Portland. Because, let's face it, The Decemberists are nerds. It's the natural label that comes when you base your album around a song cycle based on a Japanese folk tale about a crane. Or when your album has a twelve minute suite based on a Shakespeare play. Or when you're from Portland. Any of these things will do it.

But with their non-green screened/Colbert sabotaged video for 'O Valencia', they've shown the Alpha Dog team what it really means to be cool. The story is basically a mix of Badlands and what Wes Anderson's version of 'Smoking Aces' would have looked like, with a whole bunch of awkward, grandiose dialogue added in for good measure. The difference here being of course that when everyone in this video acts cool, they're not trying to actually be cool. Except for the Piano Wire Girls, they were kick ass, straight up, no chaser.

It's surprising too, while both videos have around the same running time, I was surprised at how quickly this one seemed to go by, while I never actually saw the end of Timberlake's video because I had gouged my eyes out with a spork by the sixth minute. The key really seems to be the acknowledgment of the fact that adding some hackneyed story onto your video is going to be cheesy, no matter what grade talent is involved (and to be fair, I saw 'Black Snake Moan' last night, and Mr. TImberlake is actually a pretty decent actor), so you might as well just embrace it. And of course a fork stabbing will help any proceeding, because honestly, who doesn't love a good fork stabbing?

Also, all of this Decemberist YouTube trolling led me back to their 'Rushmore' themed video for 'Sixteen Military Wives', which has one of my favorite lines, I think ever: "I declare war. On Luxembourg."