Last Friday, North Carolina quartet Mipso unveiled the video for "Big Star," marking the latest official video release from their recent self-titled album (released October 2020/Rounder Records). The video, created and directed by Allison Grosso, unfurls as a surrealistic landscape that provides a powerful visual complement to the song's dreamlike, impressionistic lyrics and gently hypnotic melody and rhythms, tied together by Libby Rodenbough's graceful, elegant, sweeping vocals.
Watch the video HERE. Listen to "Big Star (Alt)" - a stripped down, early recording of the song - recently released as a b-side bonus track, HERE.
"I created the 'Big Star' video world out of a mashup of 3D models and scans uploaded by users all over the globe," explains Grosso. "Drawing on the disorientation in the song's story, I played with scale, place, and time frame-swimming through an artifact-strewn underwater cave out into deep space, driving a sports car into an ancient Coliseum that becomes table-sized. Leading us through the portals between scenes is the Native American mythological figure of the coyote, a trickster who likes to blur boundaries." A full list of credits is
"I saw some of Allison's CGI video work and was really taken with its kind of retro-futurism-something that feels appropriate to our current flavor of apocalypse," laughs Rodenbough. "'Big Star' is a driving song to me, a song about what you see in your mind when you're looking out the window, and the journey you take in this video goes at cruising speed. Allison's open landscapes, in conjunction with the scattering of miscellaneous curiosities throughout them, suit the production of the song to a T - we used a large array of sounds, but each sparingly. In the making of the song as well as the video, we talked about balancing surreality with warmth, paranoia with a sense of hope." Listen to the original recording of "Big Star," HERE.
In the very early days of conceptualizing the recording of their Rounder Records debut, the band did an impromptu session at producer Gary Paczosa's Nashville studio, and in a moment of inspiration, laid down the first demo recording of "Big Star." That early recording was recently released as a bonus track - and dubbed "Big Start (Alt)." As the band recalls, "We were recently talking about our early pre-recording practice sessions and how much fun it was to play the songs when they were loose and fresh. 'Big Star' was the one that especially had a magic, relaxed energy to it right off the bat. We first recorded the song with Gary Paczosa in Nashville on a pretty spring day. Gary has special ear powers and helped make some of the Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch records we've loved forever. We had plenty of time, on the porch in the sun, and that early recording - what we now call 'Big Star (Alt)' - has a special live vibe to it."
This fall, Mipso embarks on a series of U.S., UK, and EU tour dates - a long awaited road trip celebrating their October 2020 album release.
Mipso - Fall 2021 Tour
U.S.
09 / 11 Chattanooga, TN / Moon River Music Festival
09 / 12 Charleston, WV / Mountain Stage
09 / 17 Seattle, WA / Nectar Lounge*
09 / 18 Portland, OR / Mississippi Studios*
09 / 19 Coos Bay, OR / 7 Devils Brewing*
09 / 21 Sacramento, CA / Goldfield Trading Post*
09 / 23 San Francisco, CA / The Chapel*
09 / 24 Morro Bay, CA / The Siren*
09 / 25 Los Angeles, CA / The Echo
09 / 26 San Diego, CA / Casbah*
09 / 28 Flagstaff, AZ / Yucca North ^
09 / 29 Santa Fe, NM / Tumbleroot Brewery ^
09 / 30 Fort Collins, CO / The Armory ^
10 / 01 Boulder, CO / Fox Theatre ^
10 / 02 Denver, CO / Bluebird Theater ^
EU/UK
11 / 01 Glasgow, UK / Broadcast
11 / 02 Manchester, UK / Gullivers
11 / 03 London, UK / Oslo Hackney
11 / 05 Paris, France / Les Etoiles
11 / 06 Ghent, Belgium / Bar Mirwaar
11 / 07 Amsterdam, Netherlands / Melkweg
11 / 09 Berlin, Germany / Privatclub
11 / 10 Cologne, Germany / Blue Shell
11 / 12 Hamburg, Germany / Nochtwache
11 / 13 Coppenhagan, Denmark / Ideal Bar
11 / 14 Stockholm, Sweden / Bryggarsalen
11 / 15 Gothenburg, Sweden / Oceanen
11 / 17 Oslo, Norway / Krøsset
U.S.
12 / 01 Asheville, NC / The Orange Peel +
12 / 02 Charlotte, NC / Visualite Theatre +
12 / 03 Winston-Salem, NC / The Ramkat +
12 / 04 Charlottesville, VA / Jefferson Theater +
12 / 05 Richmond, VA / Richmond Music Hall +
12 / 07 West Jefferson, NC / Ashe Civic Center +
12 / 09 Amagansett, NY / The Stephen Talkhouse #
12 / 10 Woodstock, NY / Levon Helm Studio #
12 / 11 South Burlington, VT / Higher Ground Ballroom #
12 / 12 Cambridge, MA / The Sinclair #
12 / 14 Old Saybrook, CT / The Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center
12 / 16 Brooklyn, NY / Music Hall of Williamsburg
12 / 17 Philadelphia, PA / Milkboy
12 / 18 Philadelphia, PA / Milkboy
12 / 19 Washington, DC / 930 Club
With support acts: *Johanna Samuels, ^Anna Tivel, +Lowland Hum, #Taylor Ashton
