Music

Reverend Horton Heat's new video is way grosser than Kanye's

by Josiah Hughes

Each Friday on Garbage Day, we rummage through pop culture’s trash cans and pick the week’s grossest item to keep forever. This week, we look at Reverend Horton Heat’s terrible new video.

It’s been another really rough week for everyone, including former teen pop star Aaron Carter, who has reportedly filed for bankruptcy. Dude owes $1.3 millie in back taxes, and currently has $8,000 in assets, $917 in his checking account, $5 in his savings account and $60 in his wallet.

While that may make him seem like he’s as rich as a king to some of us (I’ve only got $25 in my wallet, and I’m still stoked about that), most of us don’t have that much debt. So let Aaron Carter’s suffering ease your financial pain, friends.

It was also, as always, a week with at least just as much bad as good on the new music front. For one thing, I found a press release that I couldn’t stop looking at. “Still not a hipster, Canada’s pop rocking Aaron Peta announces he’s ‘Superman Too’ on second album,” the headline reads.

Edmonton-based pop rocker Aaron Peta, I learn, is working on his sophomore album Superman Too, the follow-up to his allegedly “critically acclaimed” debut I’m Not a Hipster. “It’s t-o-o because I already proclaimed I’m not a hipster and now on this album, not that I’m taking it to the cockiness of a Lou Reed or Kanye West, but there’s definitely more bravado behind it.”

Superman Too appears to have a lot of money being thrown behind it. It’ll be produced by The Rose West’s Robare Pruyn along with co-production from Ben Lindell, “who has produced, mixed and engineered music for 50 Cent, Wale, Kelly Rowland, Chromeo, MGMT and many others.” But wait, what about vocal pre-production? Who’s doing that? “Gordon Grody, voice coach to Lady Gaga and Alicia Keys, provides additional vocal pre-production.”

Damn, this Aaron Peta dude must be a big deal. A press release with all those big names, for an album that hasn’t even been recorded yet? What’s the deal with Aaron Peta?

Well, Aaron Peta has 177 likes on Facebook. His hilariously designed website boasts positive press quotes from blogs we’ve never heard of, like BlogCritics.org and RockNRoll Experience. All of this for his first album, I’m Not a Hipster. So what does it sound like? Why don’t you watch the video for the album’s title track.

Yeah, basically Aaron Peta is a dude who makes third-rate Beck/Cake songs and happens to know how to overlay “random” clip art atop footage of himself singing directly into the camera in a depressing studio. Shit’s totally po-mo, bro. As my friend Mike Deane said, “is this what Ween sounds like?” I don’t know the answer, because this is the sort of depressing trapped-in-1996 music that makes me terrified to ever listen to Ween. Aaron Peta is not a hipster, nor is he a very creative performer. He’s just a man with a lot of money to hire music industry types in an effort to drum up hype.

Of course, “I’m Not a Hipster” is far too old (in more ways than one) to qualify for this week’s worst musical outing. One could almost argue that Kanye West’s video for “Bound 2” is the perfect disaster.

Opening with over-the-top images that look like Anne Geddes trying her hand at imitating Ansel Adams, the video is oppressively clean cut. Think Gitmo reimagined by Hallmark. Then Kanye’s lady friend Kim Kardashian poses naked on a motorcycle while Yeezy stunts in front of the backdrops. Eventually, they start gently humping on top of the bike.

Some have made the argument that this video is somehow progressive, and others still think that Kanye is trolling. Or that he’s just so damn in love that he doesn’t realize how ugly this is. Regardless of how you frame it, however, this is one ugly, weird and hard-to-watch video, embarrassment chills guaranteed.

“Bound 2” is a great song, however, and because the music video looks like a Disney live action flick complete with motorcycle fuckin’, it’s much more weird than it is the worst. That title belongs to the bouncy rockabilly punk act preferred by tattoo convention attendees and Mike Ness lookalikes the world over. Ladies and gentleman, the Reverend Horton Heat.

It’s already been a rough PR month for the rockabilly (or horrorbilly or psychobilly or zombieapocalypsebilly or whateverthefuckbilly) since that one white guy painted his skin to look like a black man and told everyone it wasn’t blackface, but RevHortHeat have chosen to be offensive in an entirely different way with their new song and video “Let Me Teach You How to Eat.”

Perhaps the song’s open for interpretation — maybe it’s about encouraging women to embrace their body image without succumbing to society’s impossible standards. Or maybe, more likely, the song’s just about boning. Regardless, the “let me teach you” lyrical device is hella mansplainy, and the shots of burlesque girls cooking in lingerie don’t help dispute the male gaze aspect of the whole video. Also, the song is, pardon the food pun, unspeakably corny.

While a dated, ambiguous message is hardly surprising in this context, it’s pretty weird that it’s coming out on the same label that gave us this and this and this.