Tiny Mix Tapes

Death Cab for Cutie - Directions

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[I will now point out an aspect to each video on Directions — a visual companion to DCFC's album Plans — that a cynical reviewer would highlight as being pretentious artsy garbage.]

In order of the track list:

— A male in a shirt and tie pulls a brown paper bag out of another brown paper bag while sitting in an empty corporate America-type room. He breathes into the smaller brown paper bag and then puts the larger brown paper bag over his head. He is transported to a beach.

— Filmed in a handheld home video style, the camera captures an assortment of random images including strangers from the '70s and inanimate objects.

— Office furniture and supplies are set up at an outside location — a playground. Children act like enslaved business folk. They are set free when one boy finds a starfish in his desk drawer.

— Close-up shots of an elementary school orchestra performing the song.

— Shot of the flipping pages of a notebook. The contents of the pages include handwriting and drawings of bunny rabbits in love.

— Colorless animation with only subtle movement. Think "Paranoid Android" rough draft.

— A clay human heart (as in the organ, with capillaries and arteries) that is repeatedly destroyed and healed, until the end when the heart is buried and grows into a flower. A flower.

— Arts and crafts creatures play instruments. And fight UFOs.

— A female writes with lipstick on the bathroom mirror and her hand — in French. Then she does the same with an X-ACTO knife, but on her thigh. Still in French, though.

— Time-lapse photography. Other camera trickery non-film majors (like myself) have a hard time identifying.

— A mushy monologue recording, complete with excessive frequency static, lamenting a mother-daughter relationship. Spoken by the reflecting daughter.

Bonus Videos:

— Multiple couples toying around with sun and moon illusion tricks prior to an eclipse.

— Lance Bangs poses as a persistent fan with a camera at a live DCFC show. He gets kicked out but treks back to the front of the stage to retrieve his banana. And to shout his request again.

Bonus Feature Band Interview:

— Couldn't get passed the bassist's bangs.

1. Marching Bands of Manhattan - Paul Crown
2. Soul Meets Body - Cat Solen
3. Summer Skin - Lightborne
4. Different Names for the Same Thing - Autumn de Wilde
5. I Will Follow You into the Dark - Monkmus
6. Your Heart Is an Empty Room - Jeffrey Brown, animated by Eliza Kinkz
7. Someday You Will Be Loved - Ace Norton
8. Crooked Teeth - Rob Schrab
9. What Sarah Said - Laurent Briet
10. Brothers on a Hotel Bed - Josh Victor Rothstein
11. Stable Song - Aaron Stewart-Ahn
Bonus Videos
12. Jealousy Rides With Me - Keith Schofield
13. Talking Like Turnstiles - Lance Bangs