Friday Video Premiere

*Every* Friday, we're highlighting a specific video (or two, or three) for your end of week enjoyment.

This week, we've got another installment of "instances where the remix is better than the original song".

This week's song is Friendly Fires' "Paris"



"Paris" is a great song--full of stacatto, hazy guitars, dance rock time signatures, and delayed guitar laser beams. The band's usage of two drummers who employ bare minimum drum kits is also interesting.

But, Aeroplane's spacey, italo-disco remix of "Paris" is just better. This was difficult--because the original song is really beautiful...especially the ending, when it turns into a better version of U2's "City of Blinding Lights" (clearly showing that modern rockers still pay deserved deference to U2).



The fat, retro, analog (sounding) synths are so blissful and etheral, and adding incredibly timely handclaps as well the girls of Au Revoir Simone to the mix just make for a beautiful remix. This version is sensual and breathless, and it features not one but TWO memorable synth lines.

I also like how the promise of "I'll find you/that French boy/You'll find me/that French girl" is utilized in both versions (and not switched, as is common knowledge in covers done by bands with singers the opposite sex of the original band). In the original version, these lyrics are fitting--the vocalist seems to be promising someone to start a relationship with the
"partner" moving with him to Paris (you've got to think that the relationship between the narrator and the song's intended recipient is strange..it sounds platonic, but as if one party wants it to be more than that). But, in the Aeroplane remix, it's almost as if the song's protagonists will be re-born as the "French boy" and "French girl" of the other party's dreams.

Both songs are really stirring, and while the Aeroplane remix gets a bit dodgy for a bit during the bridge, I must admit that, once again, this is a song that has a remix better than the original song itself.