Blonde Redhead have released a video for "Top Ranking" - my favorite song on their recent album 23, which I like especially for its vocal harmonies. The video is directed by Mike Mills and features choreography and dance by Miranda July, the writer, performance artist, and film director (Me And You and Everyone We Know). Kudos to mogger mejeffb for posting a link to a high-resolution Quicktime file of the video a few days ago. For the lazier among us, here's now the YouTube version:The esteemed Puffmagic reviewed 23 upon its release from a newcomer's perspective. I've followed Blonde Redhead a tiny bit longer, since when their fifth album Melody Of Certain Damaged Lemons came out in 2001. I loved its rhythmic sophistication, the descending guitar and baritone guitar lines, the spareness of its arrangements, and the inventiveness of its songwriting (e.g., the subtle guitar riff variations on "In Particular" and the chamber music for the shoegaze set on "This Is Not"). It marked a real step forward in the band's progression towards a sound of their own from their heavily Sonic Youth influenced beginnings in the early '90s.

On 23 Blonde Redhead again manage to achieve strange beauty despite yet another change in sound. (I use the word 'change' because I'm yet to be convinced that this time the change is a leap forward.) Dominating this album are polished sonic panoramas of languid dream pop, subtle electronics, and occasional brass and vocal harmonies. (Older fans may find the virtual absence of baritone guitar regrettable.) Blonde Redhead undeniably retain a knack for lush haunting melodies and well-written songs, but the lovely spareness and rhythmic sophistication of their mid-career work remains gone. The consequent lack of contrast (for some reason, I'm thinking of a spinning bicycle inner tube) remains the one flaw that 23 shares with Misery Is A Butterfly. (I found Misery to have some of Blonde Redhead's most haunting and beautiful songs to that date but I found its production so full of layers and layers of keyboard and strings as to be stifling.) Many have called 23 more fluffy and less intense than Misery. Less intense it is, but I for one am glad that the production is more streamlined and less suffocating this time around. My one piece of advice would be that (despite the lack of contrast whereof I complain) 23 is best listened to as a whole from start to finish.