While Beck’s songs for Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World made sense for the inter-film group Sex Bob-omb, they never really felt as contemporary and frenetic as the film itself. A proper soundtrack would feature music as hyper, glitchy, and spasmodic as the movie it accompanied. That’s the kind of world suggested by Glockabelle’s music. A classically trained pianist who grew up in New York and Paris, Glockabelle (née Annabelle Cazes) has been performing for years, garnering attention when she showed off her unique glockenspiel playing style during a tour with Fiery Furnaces in 2008. Most recently, she utilized her singing chops by voicing The Go! Team’s “Catch Me On The Rebound,” off the superlative new album The Scene Between.
Her new Wolf BBQ EP showcases her art-punk, synth-pop provocateur music with gleeful abandon, while still highlighting her exquisite musicianship. The Nate Dorr-directed video for single “Wolf BBQ” pairs a spastic track with an imagined 8-bit video game, in which the wolf protagonist does exactly what you’d expect: hits up a barbecue. The music is overstimulated pop (she refers to it as “glockrock”), as though someone gave Deerhoof a bunch of cocaine. Singing in both English and French, Cazes makes the song feels like the spawn of some Ritalin-addled pop culture collision. Watch it below, and then check out the list of European tour dates, where Glockabelle is opening up for The Go! Team, and presumably joining the group onstage every now and then, as well. (Sorry, Americans: Your only chance to catch her this summer is in Brooklyn, at a one-off show with Kaki King on May 21, at Rough Trade.)
Glockabelle European tour 2015:
June 5—Marble Factory—Bristol, United Kingdom *
June 6—Brudenell Social Club—Leeds, United Kingdom *
June 7—King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut—Glasgow, United Kingdom *
June 9—Ostpol—Dresden, Germany
June 11—Feinkost Lampe—Hannover, Germany
June 12—Badstrasse8—Fürth, Germany
June 13—Torastrassenfestival—Berlin, Germany
June 17—Village Underground—London, United Kingdom *
June 19—Limelight—Belfast, United Kingdom *
June 20—Whelan’s—Dublin, Ireland *
June 21—Sound Control—Manchester, United Kingdom *
June 22—Espace B—Paris, France ^
* with The Go Team
^ with Emmanuelle Parrenin and Flóp