Last fall, Toronto duo Death From Above 1979 released The Physical World, the follow-up record to their 2004 debut; it was a welcome revelation for many reasons, not least because of the band’s very public break-up and dissolution in 2006. For their first music video off their sophomore album, for “Trainwreck 1979,” DFA 1979 let a live performance speak volumes of the band’s return to igniting passions and thrashing eardrums everywhere, but now we have something…a little different, but nonetheless effective.
Cue up the really awesome and really bizarre video for Physical World standout “Virgins” (directed by Eva Michon, who also did the band’s 2014 documentary Life After Death from Above 1979), which takes us to the pastoral living of Amish country. Setting the band’s fierce and ferocious delivery against a group of Amish teens, um, purging their religious restrictions is something truly exquisite, especially as vocalist Sebastien Grainger screams, “There’s nothing sacred to me / I lost it in the backseat.” The band continues, “The video takes cues from the lyrics of the song which are a meditation on innocence and coming of age. That very precarious time in life when sex is elusive, maybe even frightening but always compelling.” There’s also an A+ cameo from Grainger and bassist Jesse F. Keeler if you make it through the sexual, mushroom-eating, Dionysian visuals.
The Physical World is out now on Warner Brothers.
Read our cover story Surviving the Fall: The Resurrection of Death From Above 1979.
