Friday I’m In Love: La Blogothéque

The perfect intersection of film and music.

Last Friday, Maggie Rogers released her debut LP, Heard It In A Past Life. If you don’t know about Maggie Rogers, all you need to do is watch this video:

The album is great, lots of pop hits and earnest songwriting. But that’s not the point of this week’s edition. As part of her press tour/cycle/promo/whatever, she also made a video with La Blogothéque in Paris.

And, wow. Suddenly, I remembered how much I loved La Blogothéque and their approach to music and film. It started with the Take-Away Shows. If you cared about indie rock in the mid-00s, then you’ve seen some (all?) of them. I have 124 of them saved on a hard drive somewhere. (Remember sniffing out QuickTime files and downloading them… was that just me?) If you were on the scene in 2007, you made something with the folks at La Blogothéque—just look at the playlist of 2007 videos: Beirut, Grizzly Bear, Bon Iver, the National, Andrew Bird, Sufjan Stevens, Dirty Projectors, Architecture in Helsinki, José González…

You only have to watch a few of them to understand the formula: bare/raw performance + small audience + interesting setting + creative cinematography + color work. It was perfect for the time. And, well, seeing the Maggie Rogers video made me wonder why I’d stopped searching them out for the last few years. Too much content, too little time.

Anyway, one of the driving creative forces behind the Take-Away Shows was director Vincent Moon, an incredibly prolific, but relatively unknown director who had an enormous influence on the look and feel of indie rock from 2005 to 2010. He worked for years with the National, shooting (abstract and awesome) videos, performances, and even a full-length film (A Skin, A Night). He shot another film for Arcade Fire (Miroir Noir). He worked with everyone from REM and Stephen Malkmus to Tom Jones and Yo La Tengo. His work with the National is some of my favorite stuff, ever. I’ve probably watched this video for About Today (one of the five greatest songs of all time) a million times. It’s weird and kind of makes my eyes cross, but I love it.

So, yeah, La Blogothéque and the Take-Away Shows. Watch them all. If you need me to get your beak wet, here are a handful of my favorites.

Every Friday I share something I love. Usually, it’s a new infatuation. Occasionally, it’s something else. We’ll see how it goes. Thanks for the theme song, Phoebe Bridgers!