The Avalanches feat. Danny Brown & MF Doom – Frankie Sinatra
2016 · Directed by Fleur & Manu
106K Likes
Best comments
1.“I always wondered why people told me not to drink the juice from glow sticks.”
More comments
- 2.“Fun fact: to make this, they just filmed an average day in Florida.”
- 3.“My kids and I are in this video, lol. At the beginning, walking to the ice cream truck – my son runs past the lady doing the splits, slinging a shirt around. We had so much fun that day.”
The story
The Avalanches went almost sixteen years between albums. Sixteen. When the Australian sample wizards finally came back in June 2016, this was the lead single from Wildflower, and it's built on an old calypso record by Wilmoth Houdini, Bobby Sox Idol, plus the melody of My Favorite Things. Robbie Chater first heard the Houdini track at a Melbourne club and admitted the band found it repetitive and annoying at first. Then they grew to love it. Danny Brown and MF Doom handle the verses.
The video, from the directing duo Fleur & Manu, was shot in the swamps around New Orleans, and none of the featured rappers show up in it. Instead a food truck at a small-town carnival sells frozen treats laced with a glowing neon-yellow goo. Anybody with yellow lips starts hallucinating. Airboat men lose it, a family at supper gets weird, one guy acts out jungle-war flashbacks, and soon the cops have a woman sealed in a plastic bubble while people in hazmat suits pick through the collapsed customers.
Rolling Stone summed it up as carnival-goers running amok on glowing, hallucinogenic ice cream. Fair enough. The single went gold in Australia. Moral of the story: never buy dessert from a truck that glows.
