US / THEM: Jail Weddings launch video series for entire 13-song album with debauched first clip

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"One of the year’s most exhilarating and infectious records, and an assured statement of purpose by one of L.A.’s most compelling groups." -- NBC San Diego

“Hart's obsessively Orbison-esque vocal pleas can send shivers down the spine and draw a tiny tear to the eye in songs that reek of moody doo-wop and do not skimp on the steamy, heaving punk rock & roll.” – LA Weekly

Los Angeles' garage-punk revision of 60s chamber pop, Jail Weddings has launched an endeavor as ambitious as the 10-piece band's size. Starting with the release of the video for "I Thought You Were Someone I Knew", Jail Weddings will release new videos for each of the 13 songs on their recent album, Love Is Lawless. The debauched clip was directed by Kyle Safieh, edited by Ryan Andrus and, seemingly, nearly derailed by an enthusiastic crowd of extras.

Watch "I Thought You Were Someone I Knew" HERE. Download/stream the song on MP3 HERE.

Love Is Lawless takes the pleading, wide-eyed romance of 60’s pop-vocal idealist tantrums to subterranean levels never previously seen from this genre. A shadow has been cast over the fleeting Utopia of modern love, where we still wear such out of date traditions as marriage and monogamy like shackles on a chain gang. Who better to have cast this shadow then Jail Weddings – a soul-stricken modern day Wall Of Sound rock and roll behemoth, comprised of ten (yes, 10) grown men and women who at least have the guts to admit they have still have the emotional stability of an eternally wounded teenager.

Fronted by Gabriel Hart (explosive frontman and mastermind behind the now defunct LA noir punks The Starvations), Jail Weddings is often described as “Nick Cave fronting The Shangri-Las.” The band has carefully crafted these 13 songs over a three year period (since their actual inception in the summer of 2007), released October 2010 on the still skidding heels of two sold out singles and 2009’s critically acclaimed EP Inconvenient Dreams (White Noise/Tru-Vow).

Sure they may siphon from the 60’s pool, but do not confuse Jail Weddings as any kind of mere throwback act. The sphere of influence is vast, from the grandiose Scott Walker-esque soundscape of the album’s existential opener “How Am I Alive?” to the E-Street Band gone to Hell epic “I Thought You Were Someone I Knew”, to the Sparks meets Meatloaf bombastic melodrama of “What Did You Do With My Gun?”, the band proves its sound is unique as it is limitless.

Even somewhat theatrical in its scope, Love Is Lawless is sprinkled with moments of quieter reprieve as well, with Hart’s folksy “One Of These Days” where he and his vocal bookends (Katya Hubiak and Jada Wagensomer) simply gather around one single acoustic guitar. “Eavesdroppin’" finds Hart and band arranger Brad Caulkins (of LA based band Fool’s Gold) drunken busking free-jazz under a brooding vocal, before the impending “Staring At The Stars” suddenly sneaks up from beneath, making the album explode back into high gear until its unnerving, determined conclusion “The Impossible”.