Vic Berger IV made a name for himself by editing surreal, satirical videos from existing footage of Donald Trump, Steve Harvey, Chubby Checker, and Jim Bakker. They were funny, yes, but they were also curiously impactful, serving to highlight and dissect the in-plain-sight absurdities of politics, celebrity, and religion. Any fan of his work knows that a key component of his edits is their sound design, be it in Berger’s blunt foley effects, a dread-inducing drone, or that blasted airhorn. It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, then, that he’s also a trained musician.
This Friday, December 14, Flannelgraph Records will release The Cabinets And The Cupboards, a collection of 12 original songs that Berger recorded between 2000 and 2012. “Written and self-recorded without anticipation that they would ever be released, some of the earlier songs were recorded on a Tascam multitrack cassette recorder,” reads a press release. “The earliest, ‘Friends/In The Breeze’ was written when Vic was still a high school senior.”
“All of the songs on the record are much more earnest and personal than most of my video work,” Berger tells The A.V. Club, “so I’m curious how fans of my videos will react when they hear it.
Today, we’re stoked to premiere an appropriately bizarro music video for the album’s lead single, “Every Time Get Close To You,” a sweet, charmingly lo-fi meditation on romantic anxiety that rides along some tipsy bossa nova rhythms.
“I wrote and recorded ‘Every Time I Get Close To You’ in 2009 when I was living with my wife, Ann, in Jersey City,” Berger says. “She was finishing up her master’s degree at NYU and I was feeling some uncertainty about where I was going with my career and, looking back on it, I incorporated much of how I was feeling at the time into the song.”
He adds, “I remember being obsessed with bossa nova at the time, especially the ‘60s Brazilian psychedelic genre known as Tropicalia, which would explain the bossa rhythms in this.”
Dave Paige, a Nathan For You and Comedy Bang! Bang! producer, directed the accompanying clip, which confronts Vic’s starry-eyed protagonist with a number of surreal characters (and drones) when he’s not leading a band of clowns in a dim, not-so-packed lounge.
“Dave Paige and I have been working on a project for television for the last two years, so we already have a great rapport,” he says. “He’s such a good dude and a true pro, and he’s patient with my (lack of) acting skills! He nailed this video and takes the song visually to a whole new level.”
Check it out above, and head here to pre-order digital or vinyl editions of The Cabinets And The Cupboards.