Take 70s inspired rock, mash it with stoically performed public antics, and you’d get the latest fabulously bizarre music video from Northampton-based LuxDeluxe for their song, “I Love You I Love You.”
Featuring exaggerated hip thrusts on reservoir dams, longboarding in a cowboy hat, and outlandish dancing in remote fields, the music video is three minutes of pure silliness that meshes oddly well with the tune it supports.
LuxDeluxe wandered all over western Massachusetts for the shoot, filming at Smith College, Mount Holyoke, UMass, and a eerie neighborhood “like the one in Edward Scissorhands,” bassist Jacob Rosazza noted. “We saw absolutely no one the whole time we were filming there, which made it feel even more like a vacant movie set.”
As for dancing absurdly in a public place? “We got a lot of people watching us. It felt a little funny dancing and singing to really quiet music while a group of strangers watched us. We had a lot of fun with it though!”
The song itself is warm and bouncy (“loosey-goosey,” as Jacob puts it) with a groovy bassline and a touch of a light-hearted piano. Add their classic rock ‘n’ roll guitar and it’s a dreamy summer jam that feels as vintage as the band’s T-shirts in the video.
It’s more than just a vintage vibe though. The entire album was actually recorded on old-school equipment: “The album was made in our basement on a 4 track cassette Portastudio 414. We found it to be a useful writing tool, but also really liked the sound it had and the limitations it put on us.” Despite the fact that it wasn’t made with cutting edge tech (or perhaps because of it), the track is extremely well put together. “It kind of lent itself to that classic 70s sound of The Band and the Rolling Stones. So the 4 track actually informed the kind of songs we ended up writing. I Love You, I Love You in particular, is inspired heavily by Music From Big Pink and Let It Bleed.”
It makes sense that their sound is so cohesive: “we’ve been playing music together since we were around 10 years old… three of us are related! Our musical history together spans so much of our lives, and we have a really special creative dynamic that allows us to improvise together, both during our writing/recording process and during our live shows, and still be right on the same page with each other.”
See how that dynamic is live at one of their upcoming shows at Iron Horse Music Hall on April 23, or at Out Of The Blue Too on May 14. Check out their Facebook page for details about their upcoming record Let’s Do Lunch!