Director Mark Pellington has had more influence on pop culture than most rock stars; He’s worked with most of them, too.

Creator of Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy,” filmmaker continues creating moving images, moving imagery with upcoming Nada Surf piece.
 
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Mark Pellington

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[VIDEO]: Pearl Jam | “Jeremy”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS91knuzoOA

If you ask, “What’s one word that comes to mind when you say ‘Pearl Jam,’” the answer may very well be “Jeremy.” This past summer, as reported by Variety, Pearl Jam officially released the uncensored version of their groundbreaking video, which MTV originally refused to air at the time of its release.
 
“I am addicted to images, and addicted to the creation of them,” Pellington says. “I adore the creation of imagery from imagination, allowing and accessing the subconscious to formulate the image created in collaboration with others. A music video is like a poem, a free form often-direct access to my subconscious.”
 
In 2020, Pellington continues to do just that with a new long-form video on tap for esteemed indie rock band Nada Surf, which has just wrapped post-production for a scheduled late October release.
 
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[VIDEO]: Bruce Springsteen | “Lonesome Day”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=RD0odiK_nZ7To
 
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About | Mark Pellington:
 
Mark Pellington became internationally recognized as one of the world’s premiere music video directors when his video for Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy” became one of the most popular in history, as well as one of the most honored. It earned him Best Director at the 1992 Billboard Video Music Awards, and picked up four 1993 MTV Video Music Awards, including Best Director and Video of the Year.
 
His videos for such noted rock, pop, and rap performers as U2, Pearl Jam, Michael Jackson, Linkin Park, Foo Fighters, Bruce Springsteen, Nine Inch Nails, Alice in Chains, Dave Matthews Band, Demi Lovato, Public Enemy, INXS, The Flaming Lips, The Fray, Jason Mraz, Cage The Elephant, Band of Horses, Moby, Natasha Bedingfield, Information Society, De La Soul, and many others form a prolific and often imitated body of work.
 
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If you ask, “What’s one word that comes to mind when you say ‘Pearl Jam,’” the answer may very well be “Jeremy.” This past summer, as reported by Variety, Pearl Jam officially released the uncensored version of their groundbreaking video, which MTV originally refused to air at the time of its release.
 
Directed and created by filmmaker Mark Pellington, the song’s music video is just one iconic clip that has established Pellington as not only an exacting artist’s artist, but arguably the most influential music video director of our time.
 
Note the word “created” used above, because, unlike anyone who may pump out a treatment and “do the thing,” Pellington’s vision for the pieces that he creates are visionary and complete.
 
Even though he has also has plenty of experience in everything from feature films (“Arlington Road,” “The Mothman Prophecies”), television (“Blindspot,” “Cold Case”) to commercial work, Pellington says, “When I listen to songs, I see. I am directly accessing a state of mind akin to a fever dream.”
 
Looking at some of his other notable music video work such as Bruce Springsteen’s “Lonesome Day” and Foo Fighters’ “Best of You,” it is clear that the through line (besides starring the biggest rock stars of the time) is Pellington’s eye and how it sees the sound.
 
The way he makes his subjects look is instantly recognizable and remarkably beautiful.
 
“I am addicted to images, and addicted to the creation of them,” Pellington says. “I adore the creation of imagery from imagination, allowing and accessing the subconscious to formulate the image created in collaboration with others. A music video is like a poem, a free form often-direct access to my subconscious.”
 
In 2020, Pellington continues to do just that with a new long-form video on tap for esteemed indie rock band Nada Surf, which has just wrapped post-production for a scheduled late October release. The 10-minute music film is the result of four months of work with the band’s Matthew Caws, and is another in a trademark music video form for Pellington, similar to the expansive 2018 work he created with Imagine Dragons for that band’s song “Next To Me.”
 
One exceedingly poetic piece in Pellington’s canon, literally one, is “One,” by U2. The clip is so memorable for what it is not. It is Pellington’s sepia-toned, powerful, slow-motion image – inspired by David Wojnarowicz’s “Falling Buffalo” photograph – of a buffalo running, and ultimately charging itself off of a cliff, that lingered in minds, stopping time as something that MTV viewers had likely never seen before or would see again. Pellington went on to create the essential video elements that contributed to making U2’s “Zoo TV” tour a memorable spectacle.
 
Speaking of MTV, this year, Pellington is interviewing artists for a documentary feature about his ahead-of-its-time show “Buzz,” which aired on MTV in 1990. The 13-episode series was hailed by critics as progressive, adventurous television and was MTV’s first internationally broadcast series.
 
While by no means ready to look back on a career that is still in motion – the Pellington-directed Quibi series “Survive” recently netted its star, Corey Hawkins, an Emmy® nomination – another current project for Pellington includes finishing up a book, “The Visualist,” a memoir to be released in late 2021, and described as “an experiential narrative, and tale that allows the pop culture fan, filmmaker to be, or budding academic a world view into a mind engaged.”
 
Mark Pellington is available for interviews. Contact Josh Bloom at Fanatic for more information.
 
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Mark Pellington | Links
 
ASSETS : WEBSITE : FACEBOOK : INSTAGRAM : TWITTER
 
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Josh Bloom at Fanatic Promotion | Contact
 
WEBSITE : FACEBOOK : TWITTER : INSTAGRAM : YOUTUBE : SOUNDCLOUD : SPOTIFY : BLOG : E-MAIL

Mike Viola is “pool-lazing” vampire in Mandy Moore-starring video for “Drug Rug” off “That Thing You Do!” vocalist’s upcoming “Godmuffin.”

See mini horror movie via Rolling Stone; Also streaming: “Creeper,” Viola’s ode to his prematurely departed friend, iconic songwriter Adam Schlesinger.
 
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Mike Viola as photographed by Silvia Grav
 
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Mike Viola | “Drug Rug”
 

 
[VIDEO]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXQokPDo77c
 
[STREAM]: https://Fanatic.lnk.to/MikeViola-DrugRug
 
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About | “Drug Rug”
 
“Legend has it that vampires can’t expose themselves to sunlight, but Mike Viola begs to differ,” explains Rolling Stone in its coverage of Viola’s horror short for his latest single.
 
“He’s a pool-lazing vampire in the new video for ‘Drug Rug,’ a track off his upcoming LP Godmuffin. Directed by Caitlin Gerard, the video opens with Viola lying on a float in Mandy Moore’s pool. ‘This again?’ she asks herself, catching him through her glass window. ‘What the fuck? Get out of here!’”
 
“Viola channels his preternatural gift for directness and warmth into a celebration of youth,” BuzzBands.LA says it its premiere post of the song. Viola explains that the tune is “a look back at my icy days in NYC, when the drug of choice was recreational psychedelics and narcotics. Get blasted, then run around the city having FUN. This is an ode to my beloved classic rock, as well.”
 
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Mike Viola
Godmuffin
Dec. 11^th, 2020
(Good Morning Monkey / Grand Phony)
 

Track Listing:
01. USA Up All Night
02. Creeper (STREAM)
03. Drug Rug (STREAM | VIDEO)
04. We May Never Be This Young Again
05. All You Can Eat
06. The Littles
07. Superkid 2, Trying To Do The Thing I Was Born To Do
08. Honorable Mention With Jam Show
09. People Pleaser, You’re The Man Of The House Now
10. Ordinary Girl
11. That Seems Impossible Now
 
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Mike Viola | About
 

Mike Viola is a Grammy®-nominated producer, musician, songwriter and singer best known for his work with Panic! At The Disco, Mandy Moore, Jenny Lewis, Ondara, Matt Nathanson and Fall Out Boy. His original music has been featured on soundtracks for movies such as “That Thing You Do!,” “Get Him To The Greek,” and “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.”
 
Viola’s latest album Godmuffin arrives Dec. 11^th via Good Morning Monkey / Grand Phony preceded by the single “Drug Rug,” out now.
 
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Music lives in Mike Viola. Shit, it’s his last name, right?
 
Godmuffin (Good Morning Monkey / Grand Phony, Dec. 11^th) even opens with strings and man, do they tug.
 
Hard.
 
“Don’t be afraid, no don’t be afraid / We still have time, we still have time / There’s so much I wanna do”
 
“I wrote ‘Creeper’ the morning I got the news my close friend died,” Viola says. “He was my age. Now he can’t make music. I still can. I can still spend my time looking for the secret cause, the next new song, even when it feels too late, ‘cause I still have time.”
 
Viola’s friend is the artistically immortal, Adam Schlesinger, to whom Viola will forever be publicly tied as the voice of his friend’s perfect, Oscar®-nominated pop song “That Thing You Do!”
 
At any other time, this association would be a fun fact. A bullet point in a career full of them. But right now it’s painful to listen to with Viola’s real-life tragedy in mind. Somehow, he makes it sound beautiful.
 
Godmuffin follows-up Viola’s 2018 album The American Egypt, and is his first return in over a decade to the more conventional rock and pop sound that he first broke through with as front man of Candy Butchers during that band’s string of major label records in the late-90s to mid-2000s.
 
Godmuffin was written and recorded alone in Viola’s home studio. He describes it as “11 songs about transformation” and Viola isn’t afraid to let you see.
 
“It’s youthful in the chances it takes,” he says. “It doesn’t give a fuck.”
 
In the face of fine-tuning everything into oblivion, Godmuffin is the least experimental-sounding experimental record you’ll hear this year. Viola records on half-inch tape and mixes on a vintage Auditronics console without the advantage of digital editing.
 
“The recording is linear, 'cause I can’t punch and fix things very easily, especially when I’m playing drums.  On the computer, you can repair all of your mistakes ‘til you sound perfect. Or even worse, tune or beat detective the life out of it. I prefer rock music that’s beautifully flawed.”
 
“It’s human,” he says.
 
“Only the dead get to heaven / Here on earth we just get lost”
 
Human it is.
 
Viola sings the chorus of the album’s first single “Drug Rug,” and it’s as if you’re listening to recently re-discovered dedications from a high school yearbook.
 
It’s not nostalgia, it’s time traveling written from the point of view of the graduated Viola, “who’s spent a lifetime doing windmills on Big Star guitars, slick with Todd Rundgren syrup hand-drawn from the tree.”
 
Elsewhere on Godmuffin, Viola sings about being a teenager (“USA Up All Night”), about being the father of teenagers (“The Littles,” “Ordinary Girl”), and even offers up a sequel (“Superkid 2, Trying To Do The Thing I Was Born To Do”) to a previously released song (“Superkid”) about being a teenager.
 
Youthful. Not giving a fuck.
 
Is there a time in our lives when we feel more invincible? Godmuffin is the sound of fearlessness.
 
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Mike Viola | Links
 
ASSETS : WEBSITE : FACEBOOK : INSTAGRAM : SPOTIFY : APPLE : GRAND PHONY
 
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Josh Bloom at Fanatic Promotion | Contact
 
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Elephant 6 Recording Co., Apples In Stereo co-founder Hilarie Sidney to release first album in thirteen years with her band The High Water Marks.

“Ecstasy Rhymes” is joyous return to perfect indie pop-rock form by sole female founder of legendary musical collective. Hear first two singles, out now!
 
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The High Water Marks (L-R): Logan Miller, Hilarie Sidney, Per Ole Bratset, Øystein Megård. Photo credit: Self-Portraits, Illustration by Per Ole Bratset.
 
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The High Water Marks | In The Press
 
“Clock-stopping, pulse-raising mega-pop.” — UNCUT
 
“Complex and considered arrangements... Sugar-coated melodies to spare.” — Pitchfork
 
“Beautifully warm, catchy, high-energy... garage pop for the masses.” — PASTE
 
“Winning post-punk pop that’s heavy on the fuzz.” — Under The Radar
 
“Giddy pop... Punchy songwriting... Undeniably sunny.” — Westword (Denver)
 
“Get a fix of the exquisitely crafted brand of lo-fi rock.” — PopMatters
 
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The High Water Marks | “Can You”
 

 [STREAM]: https://Fanatic.lnk.to/TheHighWaterMarks-CanYou
 
[VIDEO]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3c8c5DGOpE
 
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About | “Can You”
 
“Instantly recalls the heyday of Elephant 6, with an earworm melody nestled in fuzzy indie rock production.” — Brooklyn Vegan
 
“‘Can You’ is a song about pushing back the darkness to find the light. I wrote it during the dark months. I should add that we were recording in Logan’s studio, which also served as a guest room for my son, Anders. One night we were up late doing vocals, and Anders kept saying the lyrics to ‘Can You’ back to me in a very serious voice and then cracking up. He’s a snarky teenager. I won’t forget that.” – Hilarie Sidney, The High Water Marks
 
Listen via Brooklyn Vegan or at the links above!
 
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[STREAM]: https://Fanatic.lnk.to/TheHighWaterMarks-AwardShow
 
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About | “Award Show”
 
“It’s classic indie rock, yeah,” says Beats Per Minute about “Award Show” by The High Water Marks, “but there is something more coursing through its melodic veins, resulting in a wry distillation of influence and experience which few bands can express with any sense of finality. The High Water Marks manage this herculean task without the least bit of effort.”
 
 “‘Award Show’ is about anxiety, being really confident, and then over-thinking your behavior. You know, you go somewhere and try really hard, and act like you’ve got your shit together, and then you go home and start replaying conversations in your head and feeling foolish.” – Hilarie Sidney, The High Water Marks
 
Listen via Beats Per Minute or at the link above!
 
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The High Water Marks
Ecstasy Rhymes
Nov. 20^th, 2020
(Minty Fresh)
 

Track Listing:
01. Ode To Lieutenant Glahn
02. Annual Rings
03. Can You (STREAM | VIDEO)
04. Ecstasy Rhymes
05. Award Show (STREAM)
06. Some Like It Lukewarm
07. The Trouble With Friends
08. I’ll Be Formal (With You Because of It)
09. Pepin le Bref
10. Accidentally On Purpose
11. Satellite
12. Pretending To Be Loud
 
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The High Water Marks | About
 
“I am so lucky to have been a musician throughout my life,” says Hilarie Sidney of The High Water Marks, the band she fronts out of her adopted home town of Grøa, Norway. The foursome is set to release Ecstasy Rhymes, its first album in 13 years, via Minty Fresh on Nov. 20^th, 2020.
 
You probably know Sidney best for what she got up to during her time living in Denver, Colorado.
 
Sidney is the co-founder of one of the most influential musical collectives of the past, oh, forever amount of years.
 
Elephant 6 is a storied, and now legendary, musical collective and Sidney was as at its nucleus as a founding member of The Apples in stereo.
 
It was a “boys club,” Sidney confesses.
 
Sidney was the only woman among her band and the other two acts – Neutral Milk Hotel and Olivia Tremor Control – that were the most visible members of Elephant 6, and as the umbrella opened to international recognition and acclaim, and to seemingly dozens of other bands that wanted to be a part, Sidney’s enthusiasm drifted.
 
Her passion for songwriting never wavered, however.
 
“Having been in the Apples and on the road since 1993, I started to have many more songs than could ever be released on an Apples record. I was piling up songs, and being surrounded by a group of men for so many years, one can lose oneself,” she confides.
 
Sidney eventually found new love, and a new musical partnership, when she formed The High Water Marks, releasing a debut album (Songs About The Ocean) in 2003. The record was written and demoed through the mail with her now-husband and bandmate, Per Ole Bratset, whom she initially met at an Apples gig in Norway in 2002. A follow-up album (Polar) arrived in 2007.
 
By that time, Sidney and Bratset were an item.
 
“Per and I had our son in 2005,” Sidney says of becoming a mother for the second time (Sidney and Schneider also have a son from their marriage.) “I realized I wanted a break from touring. That whole life had begun to wear me out.”
 
The fallout from Sidney’s divorce from Schneider, and life as a mom with two boys, led her to officially leave the Apples in 2006 and to put the music business on the back burner soon after.
 
“Still writing songs, always writing songs...”
 
With that, Sidney attempted to clean out the closet in 2011, leading to some recording sessions that eventually had to be scrapped, and leaving her to feel “kind of hopeless,” she remembers.
 
But drummers are tough!
 
Sidney picked herself up and headed in another direction by beginning to finish up a Bachelor’s degree, which led to her being awarded a prestigious study abroad scholarship at the University of Oslo.
 
“Moving was everything I had hoped it would be,” she explains. “In Norway, we have a work-life balance, health care, a living wage, five weeks of vacation, and freedom for our youngest son to roam without constant supervision.”
 
Perhaps most importantly, she started playing music again.
 
Thirteen years after releasing her last album as The High Water Marks, the band has completed a new album that reflects the maturity, perseverance, songwriting, and performing talent that made Sidney’s contributions to Elephant 6 and the Apples so integral.
 
If she was marginalized at the time, those notions are blown out by Ecstasy Rhymes, 38 minutes of perfect power pop, one song after another that will take any fan of the songs that Sidney contributed to Apples recordings – her voice is instantly recognizable – right back to the most potent days of that band’s career.
 
As he did on previous releases, Bratset also contributes lead vocals on several songs, all of which were co-written with Sidney. In addition to Sidney on Vocals, Guitars, Keyboards, and Drums, and Bratset on Vocals and Guitars, the band includes Logan Miller on Bass, Guitar, and Drums, along with Øystein Megård on Drums. Keyboards, and Backing Vocals.
 
“I feel like for the first time ever, we have a dream team,” Sidney says. “I have my partner in crime by my side, like always, but we managed to also find these two other fantastic people who we can work with so well. We finally have the best band we’ve ever had and a great record.”
 
Seems Sidney’s luck as a musician hasn’t run out yet.
 
Ecstasy Rhymes, the first album in 13 years by The High Water Marks, arrives Nov. 20^th, 2020 on Minty Fresh. The album’s first singles “Can You” and “Award Show” are out now.
 
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The High Water Marks | Links
 
ASSETS : FACEBOOK : INSTAGRAM : SPOTIFY : APPLE : MINTY FRESH
 
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Josh Bloom at Fanatic Promotion | Contact
 
WEBSITE : FACEBOOK : TWITTER : YOUTUBE : INSTAGRAM : SOUNDCLOUD : SPOTIFY : BLOG : E-MAIL