A Favor House Atlantic - (2004)
Music Video/Single by Coheed and Cambria
A Favor House Atlantic was the first official single from the bands sophomore album, In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3. Released in 2004 the song became the bands breakout hit. Considered to be the most straight forward track in their whole career, there is a reason why this song got played on the radio. It's fun, catchy, and stands on its own as a song, you could say it is about lost love or something along those lines. The song is a track involving an interaction with characters from the Amory Wars series, Claudio Kilgannon, and Al the Killer. The track isn't necessarily the greatest Coheed song ever, not even close, but it has some great values that create a good song with catchy lyrics and instrumentation, and Claudio's voice fits the track pretty nicely. I have heard some listeners say that this song is a terrible representation of the band, and they are right to a certain extent. The straight forward pop-punk/emo sound isn't something Coheed is known for, except for this specific track, but songs off all their albums exhibit these qualities. It may take a little effort, something the listeners didn't do obviously, but you can find a ton of similar tracks that may have some prog elements, but generally contain the same sound as A Favor House Atlantic.
Now for the music Video. If you noticed, anyone reading obviously noticed, there are two videos above. Both are official and were released after the single. The first video is a more cliche take on what the music video can be used for. It follows the band hanging out in a bar trying to get girls. Ok, nothing special there. There are a lot of shenanigans that include drag queens, looking up girls skirts, and getting thrown out by a guard. It's very hit or miss to be honest. I did find myself chuckling at one or two scenes but other than that it felt pretty awkward. The scenes change between the bar and an alternate version of Coheed playing on the stage, presumably in the same bar as you see some band members talking trash about their alter egos on stage. The performance on the stage actually was pretty cool to watch. It had an 80's vibe to it with the wardrobe choices for the band. Headbands, tight clothes, hairstyles all make an appearance. The track fits in nicely with the video even though it has nothing to do with the story. Overall this video would probably be liked by a casual fan of the track, but a die hard child of the fence, the band's name for their fans including myself, would probably not appreciate the overall presentation of the video.
The second video is actually involved in the Amory Wars saga but is not about the official story for the track. Instead the animated music video is actually following the characters Coheed and Cambria Kilgannon as teenagers. An animated version of the band, a real beefy version of the band, is seen playing on some asteroid. It is kinda funny how such a jacked up Claudio sings in such a high octave. The story involves multiple encounters with major characters of the story. It sets up the events for The Second Stage Turbine Blade. We see the Monstar virus, represented by the dragon fly from the cover art of the debut album, being installed into Coheed himself. The story itself is tough to follow due to the random events that seem to occur out of order. It ends with Coheed turning into some weird looking version of the Silver Surfer and flying into space to create the Keywork symbol. The symbol being used by the band as their official symbol as well as to represent the universe in the Amory Wars. The video may make more sense after I do my full story review for the Amory Wars but I don't know due to the strange out of order presentation. Overall the song doesn't necessarily fit the video and even feels strange when seeing Claudio's muscular version singing with the emo style. Quick side note, the first video uses a radio edit of the song. This cuts out a strange intro/outro that is supposed to be sinister and creepy. The second video includes the intro and outro though as it is the album version of the song.
The track gets a like from me but both video's get a meh for presentation issues and not really fitting the track very well.
Watch/listen to it yourself and give me your opinions. Like it? Dislike it? Why?