Meet Groovy Movies and watch an eclectic video for “Don’t Take Her Love Away”

While his band was on an indefinite hiatus back in 2013, former Tough Shits member Nick Carlisi took the opportunity to explore a different avenue of music. The result was Groovy Movies, a moniker that captures the retro-hued psych pop filling Carlisi’s recent collection of songs.

The local musician recorded a handful of songs here in Philadelphia, finishing them up in Atlanta and Los Angeles over the next couple of years; this summer saw the digital release of those tracks.

Not wanting to be one-dimensional, Carlisi released videos for two of the songs (“People seem to prefer looking at stuff while listening to songs online instead of just clicking on a Soundcloud link and looking at the little playhead moving along” he says). He made the clip for “Tambourine” himself, but reached out to a YouTube channel that he had become particularly fond of for “Don’t Take Her Love Away.” From Nick:

I came across this channel called ‘CRFilmsCrew’ one day while randomly searching for an obscure Beach Boys song called ‘Brian’s Back.’ They make endearingly strange videos for Beach Boys and other various artist’s songs (mainly from the 60’s) using a bunch of Barbie and Ken type dolls. I was kind of obsessed with their videos for a minute. So, I decided to hit them up and ask if they would make a video for one of my songs and they said ‘yes’. I have no idea who they are. I don’t know if they’re women or men, adults or children. They gave me a list of rules about the lyrics, like ‘no swearing’ and ‘no using the lord’s name in vein’, which was pretty cute.

The pairing is a good match. CRFilmsCrew’s literal interpretation of Carlisi’s lyrics, acted out through the stop-motion movements of Barbie dolls, adds many levels of strangeness and cultural meta-ness to the swirling, kaleidoscopic song.

Watch the videos below and listen a few more songs from Groovy Movies here.