#38
Dirty Beaches: “Lord Knows Best”
[from Badlands / ZOO] 

The official video for “Lord Knows Best” features Dirty Beaches’ mastermind Alex Zhang Hungtai in a fitted white t-shirt, tight black jeans and pointed toe boots with each strand of his black hair slicked back ever so casually. As he holds a cigarette in between the fingers of one hand, his other hand snaps it’s digits in time with the song and the rest of his swaying body. This stark image in combination with the rolling and repeating keyboard line would allow just about anyone to work their way backwards and discover the exact influences behind most aspects of the sound and style of Dirty Beaches.

Still, this easily accessible knowledge of the intentions behind Hungtai’s music does nothing to detract from it, but instead, enhances it. In a world where most people wear their persona and their style as a Halloween costume rather than allowing it to be an actual extension of themselves, the craft that goes into the persona of Dirty Beaches fits Hungtai as snugly as the pack of unfiltered cigarettes that is no doubt rolled up into the cuff of his shirtsleeve.

For a song with such repetitive attention to both it’s lyrics and it’s sound, “Lord Knows Best” travels down some pretty intense spiritual and psychological roads. It that sounds lived in and completely loved.

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