“Plants” (PRIG song) – Queen City Sounds and Art

PRIG_Plants1_lg — PRIG, photo courtesy the artists

PRIG’s song “Plants” shouldn’t work. The distorted, warbling drone, surging synth sounds and slightly off-kilter vocals and playful guitar/plinky keyboard melody is not for anyone looking for something they’ve heard a million times on commercial radio or like-minded playlists. Its eccentricity is unabashed and seems utterly unselfconscious. It’s like hearing the early Ween for the first time or The Frogs or King Missile after a lifetime of having your brain conditioned to accept more traditional and established faire. But part of your brain knows that a lot of those rules of how a song should sound are arbitrary and the sort of quirky 16-bit video game soundtrack aesthetic of “Plants” has an undeniable charm. The accompanying video for this mini-opus too looks like something someone made using 1990s graphic design software ideas in the context of a more modern video editing platform. When the flower shoots lighting and levels buildings and the guys shoot it with cans from a, yes, cannon, and bring it low before a mob of flower people come to chase them off it just seems perfect for a song that belongs on the same shelf as the aforementioned as well as The Residents and Renaldo & The Loaf. Watch the highly imaginative, animated video on YouTube and connect with PRIG at the links below.