Collaborative side-project between The National‘s Matt Berninger and Ramona Falls’ Brent Knopf (formerly of Menomena), EL VY just unveiled the latest promo-video, “No Time to Crank the Sun” to support the release of their debut effort, Return to the Moon out last October.
Directed under the consummate guidance of Matt’s brother, Tom Berninger, also known for his documentary of The National, Mistaken for Strangers, the latest video from the duo follows the arduous press-campaign and formalities leading up to the signature-release of Return to the Moon.
Shot in noir-like black-&-white, the entire video compiles a narrative of high-speed, stop-motion footage detailing the band via a multitude of indecisive interviews and endless peddling of redundancy into pious nuance. Carefully manipulated, the video bares a semblance of virtue given its context amidst Berninger’s baritone bravado and Knopf’s musical stylings.
Matt Berninger reflects on the new EL VY record and issues it as maintaining an autobiographical quality through its conceptual elements:
“The lyrics in this project have more specific references to Cincinnati. In the National, there are references to Ohio, but I was thinking about my adolescence and Cincinnati a lot and how I fell in love with music. I was romanticizing Cincinnati – the punk club called Jockey Club that I never went to because it had closed up. My cousin had told me about it. It became a muse and a setting for a lot of the songs. The characters aren’t necessarily autobiographical – some of them are, but it’s bits and pieces. I was reflecting towards a specific time – maybe more so than in other pieces of music.”