We’ve always been fans of Chris Garneau‘s sparse, mellow and theatrical songwriting. The half mechanical, half poetic world of marionettes fits perfectly Chris’ songwriting style, based on plodding piano parts, ticking percussions, string driven openings, and his unmistakable vocal style. A crew of 30 worked on this video, including director Ryan Gibeau and Michael Leach, arguably NYC’s most skilled and experienced marionette puppeteer, who handled the main puppet through the videos many challenges.

I can SO visualize the day when the Gross Relations crew sat down at a pub to discuss ideas about their upcoming music video and somebody came up with this: "Dudes, I have an idea: we should just shoot a video about what we are doing right now! A video of us, our own faces, gulping down whiskey and getting progressively wasted, that’s gonna rule!". As a matter of fact the concept works well not only with the song’s title (Fuzzy Timelines) but also with the band’s lo-fi crooked musical aesthetics. Gross Relations is about to release a 7" of this song, pre-order it at Insound here.

On November 9 (tonight) Brooklyn Bowl will host the 2nd annual Silver Sound Music Video Film Festival + Band Battle. The evening will begin at 7pm with opening act Dinosaur Feathers, last year’s Band Battle victors, with the Festival itself commencing at 8pm hosted by Candy Slice.

This year’s competitors include a lot of NYC based artists: Beyondo (in the picture, the solo project of a member of Antibalas) Stereogum’s favorite Ego Puppets, Great Elk, Lisa Jaeggi, Lucius (recently highlighted by NYTimes as one of their picks for 2010 CMJ bands to watch for).

Among the 21 music videos being shown, there will be offerings from popular Brooklyn Bands Savior Adore, Surfer Blood, Wakey Wakey, and Lacrymosa.

With a name more appropriate for a Roman general, Lucius is actually the project of peaceful and talented songstresses Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig, of Bostonian origins. Their delicate voices draw gentle harmonized lullabies accompanied by sparse arrangements of acoustic guitars and occasional piano and simple percussions. The duo has just completed an east coast tour synchronized with a residency at Rockwood Music Hall, and will perform tonight (11.09) at Brooklyn Bowl within the MVFilmFest (see blog entry underneath this one).