Snowbound by Donald Fagen

Snowbound
by Donald Fagen
from the album Kamakiriad (1993)

With a late afternoon snowstorm coming down here in the Central Virginia area, I thought it meet and seemly to showcase one of the more imaginative video clips from the early 1990s (when music videos were at the peak of their elaboration and production values): the video for the track 'Snowbound' from Fagen's 1993 album Kamakiriad.

The video was produced by the French film director Michel Gondry (b. 1963) and incorporates stop-motion animation. The video's 'retro futurism' visual style is unique, and fits perfectly with the whole sci-fi concept that Fagen emplaced in Kamakiriad.

At Nervous Time
We roll downtown
We've got scenes to crash
We're gonna trick and trash
We're gonna find some fun
We hit the street
With visors down
With our thermasuits
Sealed up tight
We can beat the freeze
And get saved tonight
Let's stop off at the Metroplex
That little dancer's got some style
Yes she's the one I'll be waiting for
At the stage door

[Chorus:]
Snowbound
Let's sleep in today
Wake me up
When the wolves come out to play
Heat up
These white nights
We're gonna turn this town
Into a city of lights

We take the tube
To Club Hi Ho
It's about deadspace
It's a marketplace
And a party house too
Something new
From Charlie Tokyo
It's a kind of pyramid
With a human heart
Beating in an ion grid
A critic grabs us
And says without a smile
The work seduces us with light
Eviva laughs and we step out
Into the blue-white night

[Chorus]

We sail our icecats on the frozen river
Some loser fires off a flare, amen
For seven seconds it's like Christmas day
And then it's dark again
And then it's dark again


[Chorus]