In 1973, director Alejandro Jodorowsky put together a psychedelic mindfuck of a film called The Holy Mountain that became an underground sensation — in no small part because John Lennon and Yoko Ono put their stamp of approval on it by underwriting some of its costs.
Somewhere along the way, their son Sean must have spent a few nights drinking in its bizarre delights.
After all, the newest video from the Ghost Of A Saber Tooth Tiger, the younger Lennon’s ever-more-fascinating band with Charlotte Kemp Muhl, is filled with a similar brand of psycho-sexual spirituality. Filmed as a companion piece for “Animals,” a “Benefit of Mr. Kite”-style jumble of wow-man experiments, the Rich Ragsdale-directed clip seems to reference the infamous Source Family of wife-swapping health-food counterculture types but with a huge dollop of Jodorowsky thrown in for good measure.
The difference, more often than not, between this and Jowdorowsky — or the similarly out-there Kenneth Anger, for instance — is in how much fun it seems like every one is having. You sense it in the twinkle in Lennon’s eye, in the zippy astronomical flights of lyric fancy, in the crazy-cool mixture of nudity and space ships, even in the playful glee of the culty sing-along scenes. Midnight Sun is due April 29, 2014 via Chimera Music.
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