Off their recent album Big Weather from American Heritage, Pittsburgh’s 1, 2, 3 premiere the Sophie Gate-animated video for “Big Weather II”. Dreams of watching television, movies, online idling, and dating are brought together in a bass line processional prepared to brave the elements. Gate’s cartoon video presents literal on-screen representations of the lyrics portrayed through lively illustrations that bring the biggest weather home.
Frontman Nicolas Snyder’s delivery of earthly desire wants of, “I want to watch t.v., and I want to pay taxes, and I want to stay in traffic, and I want to meet girls” gets represented through corresponding caricatures, drawn symbolism, and cartoon action. Beginning with a show of footsteps splashing about rain puddles, the cliche of ‘raining cats and dogs’ is animated in the descent and ascent of a dead pet as if they were a natural part of the convection cycle. As the animated rain drops fall, a somber story about a man and his deceased dog unfolds; a water spill that lifts a spirit from the television; a fish taking over Ben Franklin’s spot on the $100 bill; an awkward date at the movies; copulating grasshoppers; acts of accepting and rejecting online friend request, and even more shenanigans. Sophie’s video asks more about the conditions in effect on “Big Weather II”, shown in a cavalcade of cartoon segments about individuals and entities affected by their own storms and under the elements by their own particular circumstances.
Nicolas Snyder of 1,2,3 wrote us the following words about the video:
We met Sophie (the animator) by happenstance. We were sleeping in a friend’s basement in Brooklyn and she happened to be living on the other side of a door in that basement. Upon talking to her we found out not only how funny and lovely she was, but, that she was an animator. We obviously made plans to work together. It had been a few years since we’d seen her last, but, she contacted us and had a specific idea for a specific song from Big Weather and we simply said, ‘of course.’ We knew it’d be wonderful.
Animator Sophie Gate also described some of the ideas, concepts, and storylines at work in the video for “Bad Weather II”:
The whole album Big Weather has a very ominous feel to it, so I played on this a bit. All the shots at the beginning are of things about to go wrong, and at the end we can see some of the consequences. That little baldy head reading a big book and floating around is the song’s guardian angel, I was going to have him try and preserve himself in a pot of mayonnaise at the end but the song ran out of space. The man with the dead dog is the only story in the song that really has gone fatally wrong, leaving you to wonder what the hell happened. Was it the weather? Maybe a strike of lightning? I dunno man. In my head he just died of old age.
1,2,3’s album Big Weather is available now from American Heritage.
