IOW: Fights croon at mini-saloon
Apparently, living hundreds of miles apart will not deprive the current and former players of Champaign-Urbana’s music scene from working together as evidenced by this creation from Chris Eitel, responsible for last year’s haunting stop-motion companion to his former band Elsinore’s song, “Life Inside an Elephant.” From his Floridian digs, Eitel has collaborated with a new C-U country/Americana outfit called The Fights in making a video for their tune, “I Should Have Loved You,” relying as before on handmade animation techniques to breathe fresh lo-fi life into the format. Nifty trickery superimposes the faces of the musicians – Cole Rabenort, Dave Pride, Nick Stine, Clayton Deering, and Joe Gerard – onto paper-doll counterparts, caught playing a gig in a sepia-toned Western dive as its regulars go about their business drinkin’, propositionin’, and fightin’. Reminiscent of shoe-box dioramas your humble editor’s generation might have made for school as children, this neatly evokes subject matter that would have been in vogue two generations before that. “I Should Have Loved You” is otherwise featured on The Fights E.P., available on-line as well as at Exile on Main Street and Error Records in Champaign.
~ Jason Pankoke
The Fights – I Should Have Loved You from Chris Eitel on Vimeo.