Much Like Blake’s “The Tiger,” plenty is left unanswered in “Creeper Sits.” Who is the Creeper? What’s his name? “Why is the man so gentle and quiet?” What’s in the garbage bag?
However, the mysteries of this brief character study need not be solved or elaborated upon, for M AX NOI MACH’s lyrics satisfy as they stir the listener with their brevity and salt. His night poetry glows in the dark at vaudevillian three-sheet size; it peels off from the steel under Market-Frankford’s El.
Where does the Creeper sit “looking at the girls in dresses?” At a bus stop? On a park bench? His front stoop? Behind a home computer? A television set? In the “Other Side of a Mirror” (where we find Coleridge’s Creeper: “ And in her lurid eyes there shone / The dying flame of life’s desire”)?
No more time for questions. We’re hooked, not only by the lyrics and red rhythm, but by the stark setting and choreography of this music video. In a bare basement, with force and animation, sometimes shirtless and always sincere, our narrator and his shadow interpret, sing, stomp, flail, and flex in sync with the dingy industrial and darkly merry music. When we are informed of the Creeper’s “squinting eyes,” we ourselves must squint to see the narrator, as he leans behind video8 grain and lo-watt lighting.
The masterful visuals, harmoniously in-tune with the music, are as nude as anatomy on a disk spinning in a zoopraxiscope. The editing keeps pace with the song’s throb; the zombie convulsions are captured and looped, cut with the shadowy singer’s recitation.
We see, we feel, but we never know.
• M AX NOI MACH: http://americanrager.blogspot.com
• White Denim: http://www.whitedenim.com/wd18.html
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