Stephen Malkmus Offers Scalp Treatments in ‘Cinnamon and Lesbians’
Stephen Malkmus has never been one for lyrics with concrete meanings, so director Jay Winebrenner has his work cut out for him in making Malkmus’ abstractions come to life in the new video for “Cinnamon and Lesbians,” from Malkmus’ upcoming album with the Jicks, Wig Out at Jagbags.
The goofy clip opens with a TV turning on to show a poor bearded bro getting kidnapped in Oregon, followed by a stream of peculiar images: Two pastors rowing a dumpster (“Onward ye Christian sailors”), bassist Joanna Bolme picking up a giant toad at a bodega (“a one-stop shop with such narrow convenience”) and Malkmus administering reasonably priced scalp treatments (“Come downtown because we’ve got a cure for your head lice – we’ll do it for free”). And of course the titular cinnamon and lesbians make more than expected cameos.
The clip concludes with our shanghaied hipster freeing himself and cracking open a can of frosty Pabst Blue Ribbon to celebrate while his kidnapper fumes. It’s certainly ridiculous and surreal enough to make you wanna ape the video’s final shot – a TV turning to static and a remote getting thrown on the floor.
Wig Out at Jagbags follows-up Malkmus and the Jicks’ 2011 effort Mirror Traffic and is due out January 7th on Matador Records. “When you do an album, you go down a rabbit hole of you don’t know where you’re going,” Malkmus recently told Rolling Stone about the LP. “We got a little more of a 1966, tighten-it-up [thing]. It’s coming out in January, so it’ll be, like, 12 months of domination. Sorry for the other bands.”
You can also check out the lyric video for Jagbags cut, “Lariat,” which Malkmus recently told Rolling Stone was partially inspired by the slightly forgotten era of indie rock between 1988 and 1991. “It’s an era of silence, that people don’t really talk about. There was maybe Galaxie 500, maybe trails of Jesus and Mary Chain. It’s not a time that’s been said, ‘This was an amazing time.'”