Warm greetings to my music video programming friends across the country! It’s Andy Gesner and the staff from HIP Video Promo, here with another engrossing clip from an emerging band. Back in 2003, Isaac Lekach made quite a splash in the indiepop underground with an EP released under the name Poulain. Here was a songwriter with a distinctive and wholly engaging style – an architect of melodies, and a playful subverter of pop conventions. Lekach played most of the instruments himself, but he did persuade the kindred spirits of Now It’s Overhead – Andy LeMaster and Clay Leverett – to help him perform and record the four tracks. The EP flashed through the usual hip circuits like mercury, familiarizing music webloggers, guitar-pop fanatics and rock critics alike with Lekach’s name. Suddenly in demand, the young songwriter assembled a touring group and relocated to Los Angeles. Alone no longer, Lekach made the band permanent, and christened it Acute.

But Acute isn’t simply a continuation of Lekash’s work with Poulain. Bassist Colt Maloney and drummer Patrick Edwards are indiepop veterans themselves (Edwards slapped the skins for Pasadena’s estimable Ozma) and flexible, inspired musicians with arrangement ideas of their own. Acute expands dramatically on the template established on the Poulain EP, adding offbeat instrumentation, splashes of tape and electronic manipulation, and a vigorous pop backbeat. The group can pound like Pavement, and then pull back to something as airy and ornate as the first Cardinal album. It’s all held together by Lekach’s deep, breathy, and occasionally unearthly voice – an instrument of considerable subtlety and unmistakable mystery. The pop press has noticed: “Acute goes about penning memorable alt-pop the good old fashioned way,” raves Billboard, “that lasts the full duration of an entire album.”

Now they’ve made that album. Arms Around A Stranger, the band’s first full-length and the realization of their promise, will be released this May. Dave Trumfio (My Morning Jacket) committed the band to tape, and has punched up the power-pop and made the instrumental surfaces glisten. “Follow You Home”, the lead single, is an insistent guitar-pop song with a characteristically intriguing lyric and vocal performance by Lekach. As always, the sweet melody belies the sophisticated subject matter: Acute is invariably thoughtful, even when they’re making you dance.

Josh Forbes (Damien Jurado, Barenaked Ladies) matches the trio with a clip that teases out the weird, destabilizing, haunted undercurrents in Acute’s music. Forbes shot Acute playing “Follow You Home” many times, and in the same positions in the same shallow live room – but each time, the bandmembers wore different clothing. Then, the Winch & Pulley production company shuffled the images so that it appears the bandmembers are switching their dress every second. A true editorial achievement, the “Follow You Home” video is nearly seamless in its execution of its basic concept – and the slight differences in body positioning between shots only adds to the jumpy, unsettled feel of the clip. Each bandmember is, in sequence, shown moving rapidly through the quotidian moments of the day – scenes from a typical morning and afternoon flit by in a blur. It’s only when the musicians reach the band room and pick up their instruments that the frantic motion stops, and the band settles into something more familiar and manageable – although no less strange.

Many thanks to Andy Valdez and our pals at Tsunami LG and the cool folks at Help Records for bringing us in to share this eye-catching clip with you, our cherished video programmer. We have plenty of copies of Acute’s album Arms Around A Stranger, so please be in touch if you'd like to set up an Acute contest or on-air giveaway! The band will also be touring throughout the states in this summer in support of Jesse Malin, so reach out to us if you'd like to meet up with the band for a video interview or video ID! If you need more info, call Andy Gesner at 732-613-1779 or e-mail us at HIPVideo@aol.com. You can also visit www.AcuteBand.com to find out more about Acute.

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