Febe Dobson

[DudeAsInCool]

We're Gonna Party Like It's 1986

By JEFFREY ROTTER

Published: July 25, 2004

The beginning of "Don't Go (Girls and Boys)," the latest video from the Canadian singer-songwriter Fefe Dobson, viewers might ask themselves what decade it is. As the camera breezes along West 23rd Street, borne aloft on a popping synth-drum beat, it enters an apartment, where Ms. Dobson is perched on a bed with a young man. The setting is a Big 80's tableau — Ms. Dobson dons a pair of red new wave sunglasses, sneers like Adam Ant and jerks her head to the beat as if she's working herself up to an old-fashioned flashdance. Her hair is a neatly disheveled wig reminiscent of Joan Jett's "I Love Rock and Roll" shag. Then the anachronisms creep in — Ms. Dobson removes a pair of earbuds and passes her MP3 player to her boyfriend. No, this is not 1986.

In fact, 1986 was the year Ms. Dobson was born. Seventeen years later, the singer released an eponymous album and cast her lot with other sweetly irate rock acts like Avril Lavigne and Lillix. On her latest single, Ms. Dobson has ditched the guitars and downloaded a synthesizer melody straight out of the brain of the robotic pop innovator Gary Numan (it appears that she's borrowed parts of his wardrobe as well). The video for "Don't Go" was directed by Rainbows & Vampires, a trio of Los Angeles video artists who received recognition for creating Yoko Ono's inventive "Walking on Thin Ice" last year — a surprisingly moving black-and-white cartoon about a girl and a rabbit. The threesome's visual style balances live action with animated text and floating collage elements. As the directors toggle between cartoon and reality in "Don't Go," Rainbows & Vampires gives a contemporary spin to the punk, new wave and early hip-hop aesthetics of the 80's.

You can read the rest of the video critique here in the NYTimes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/25/arts/tel...ion/25ROTT.html

[Shawn]

She plays here Monday night. If I had 33 bucks in my back pocket I might attend, but alas, we are poor.