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Chris Grabau of Magnolia Summer. Photograph by Nate Burrell, beforetheblink.com
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The word’s gone ‘round for years that Magnolia Summer was born of the fertile Americana scene, an important camp within the St. Louis musical community. But one listen to the band’s lead track, “Needles and Pins,” and you could swear that it’s a missing cut from, say, Teenage Fanclub’s Songs From Northern Britain, or R.E.M.’s last, true classic, Automatic for the People.
The song’s the basis for the first video from the Magnolia Summer album The Hill or The Climb. And it likely isn’t the last. For this project, Magnolia Summer’s founder and songwriter, Chris Grabau, teamed up with a longtime musical collaborator, Mark Ray, a St. Louis expat living-and-working in Portland, Oregon.
“They’re another form of storytelling,” Grabau says of videos. “We really left it wide-open for Mark to tell a story around the song. He incorporated a lot of stock videos, corporate videos, and slowed them down and edited them to tell this story of a weird boardroom, and a guy talking about nonsensical products. It’s a fun little collection of images. Music videos, right now, are just another part of the whole way of making music and presenting music. There’s no longer just a recording. Video is an opportunity to expand upon the theme you’re already approaching in the songs. I think it’s kind of fun.
“I’m still relatively new to it,” Grabau says of defining “success” with the video. “But like everything, you’re just throwing things out into the void, hoping that people see it. What I really hope is that you’re making things that add to a body of work. The nice thing about everything being digital and that it’s all still out there. As long as it’s accessible, that’s a pretty cool thing.”
Though he’s done just a pinch of performance-based video work with Magnolia Summer, he’s open to doing more in that vein. And Grabau’s hopeful, too, that there’s at least one more non-performance video from The Hill or The Climb to follow.
Though discussing the video via a short phone call last week, Grabau all-but-insisted that the video’s producer, Ray, be the primary contact for discussion. Sending out a small series of questions on Sunday night, Ray had answers back by Monday morning, filling the viewer in on some backstory re: his quirky vision for “Needles and Pins.”
Magnolia Summer | Needles and Pins from NORTH on Vimeo.
When did you first hear the track? And what was your impression of it?
Chris shared the songs on the new record with me while they were mixing, and then again just after it was mastered. My immediate impression was one of promise fulfilled. Chris has an extraordinary resume of writing and playing music, but when I heard this record, I couldn't get over how beautifully crafted and confident it is. It seems like all the estimable aspects of Chris' art came together in “Needles and Pins,” especially.
Can you give a sense of your work on the video? Editor? Producer? A bit of everything?
I edited the video, and designed and created the motion graphics. The footage was all cheap stock that I found while coming up with the general idea. I don't really know who filmed that stuff, there seems to be infinite amounts of that generic corporate stuff on every stock photo site. That, in itself, was kind of the idea.
Chris says that he gave you total creative control of the look/feel of "Needles and Pins," obviously showing a ton of faith in your work. Can you address how long you two have known one another, and in what musical contexts? I know that you've collaborated over a period of time, which seems to ensure a good, solid, working relationship.
We've been really good, close friends for over 15 years now, a friendship that grew out of playing music together early on, and a shared love of art in general. Whether working together or separately, we've always relied on each other for honesty, perspective and encouragement. I don't have that trust with many people, especially musically. Since I moved to Portland eight years ago, we've consistently shared work with each other for opinions, but we haven't had many chances to collaborate directly. So it was a good day when Chris asked if I wanted to work on a video for “Needles and Pins.”
Any anecdotes on the making of this video, in terms of the creation of the vibe that you wanted?
Chris and I had been tossing around a couple of ideas early on, but none of them seemed to stick, because we were initially coming at it a bit too conventionally, I think. A lot of music videos try to make up for what a song is lacking. But “Needles and Pins,” isn't lacking anything, it's a beautifully crafted song and the performance just soars. It doesn't need any help; the song earns its emotion.
That was a liberating thought, and I started to think of it less as a music video and more of a soundtrack to a mini-narrative. I've always been inspired by Bjork's use of notional story and tension in her videos, and there's a really interesting duality at the heart of “Needles and Pins”: the music lifts you up, but the lyrics tangentially seem to be about the things in life that slow us down.
So, as I was browsing through stock photography for another job I was working on, I came across these slow-motion visuals of people and abstract objects, and also this series of really upbeat corporate scenes. Put together, they made me laugh and a little sad. Which seemed a surprising, yet somehow appropriate, response to Chris' song. From there it was just fun to construct a fantastical story of this CEO guy and let the viewer wonder what would ever slow down his ambition to own the known universe.
I'll admit I was a little nervous when I showed Chris the rough cut, because I'd run pretty far off the grid from our initial ideas. But he loved it, and confirmed that our intuitive sense of each other’s work remains unusually strong after all these years.
For more about Magnolia Summer, including information on the band’s new record, The Hill or the Climb, go to magnoliasummer.com.
