Has anyone seen the featurette for Disney’s reworking of Alice In Wonderland? If you haven’t, I highly recommend that you have a team meeting with your eyes and get them to watch it. From what I could guage in 2 minutes and 40 seconds of goodness, director Tim Burton has created an ambitiously avant-garde world that’s as full of abstract metaphors and eerily odd characters as it is of illicitly lucid looking colours laced with dark undertones.
So why am I talking about Alice In Wonderland in the song of the week section? Inspiration, that’s why! If ever there was a song that brings together the contradictory natures of old and new and the constant seesawing of light and dark, it is this unsuspecting slice of junk-fi, electropop from Brooklyn’s new kids on the block Neon Indian. The song I am referring to is ‘Deadbeat Summer’, which laconically drifts back and forth between cheery summer charm and a substance induced coma. Laced with double meanings the backing track conjures familiarities of the Chemical Brothers and when combined with decidedly ethereal vocals produces a sound in the realms of M83 (or Mystery Jets at the more tame end of the spectrum). However the contents of the lyrics – if one listens closer – speak of a more sinister or absent-minded side. For me this fusion of worlds would best be described by a group of New York Hipsters playing croquet on an artificial rooftop lawn, taking breaks to drop some acid and dance on the skyline.
And what of Alices new world? Well, I could believably see Neon Indian snuck secretly beneath a giant mushroom making sweet sounds for a captivated audience of white rabbits, curious flamingos and otherworldly passers by. So drink your magic potion and skip down the narrowing path and through the tiny door to uncover tim’s favourite song of this week.
Neon Indian – ‘Deadbeat Summer’.
Enjoy.