Death Cab for Cutie - Crooked Teeth (‘Directions’ Music Video) - Death Cab for Cutie - Crooked Teeth (‘Directions’ Music Video)

2006

Death Cab for Cutie, Crooked Teeth (‘Directions’ Music Video), Death Cab for Cutie, Crooked Teeth (‘Directions’ Music Video) (2006) Director: Rob Schrab Era: Mid-2000s Indie Mainstream Breakthrough (2006) - Peak period of Death Cab for Cutie's major-label ascendancy; the 'Directions' project represents a paradigm-shifting approach to the music video format during indie rock's absorption into mainstream culture. Exceptionally high. This video sits at the intersection of multiple significant cultural and formal developments: Death Cab for Cutie's mainstream breakthrough, the radical restructuring of music video commission via open-call methodology, and Rob Schrab's cross-disciplinary creative practice. As part of the Grammy-nominated Directions collection, it is both an individual artwork and a component of a larger curatorial project that helped redefine what a music video could be. The mixed-media animated approach and the deliberate absence of the band are formally distinctive and historically significant. Context: Released in early 2006 as part of the groundbreaking Directions: The Plans Video Album, this video exemplifies a pivotal moment in indie rock's relationship with the music video form. The Directions project, conceptualized by bassist Nick Harmer and video director Aaron Stewart-Ahn through their production company otaku-house, invited directors worldwide to submit proposals, then budgeted 12 finalists to create autonomous short films for each Plans track, entirely free of band performance footage. This open-call methodology democratized the music video commission and prefigured the participatory internet culture of the late 2000s. 'Crooked Teeth' was the second single from Plans, Death Cab for Cutie's major-label debut on Atlantic Records, an album that peaked at #4 on the Billboard 200 and helped bring indie rock into the mainstream. Rob Schrab's animated, mixed-media treatment, drawing on his indie comics background, serves as a tonal counterpoint to the more earnest entries in the Directions collection, deploying humor and fantasy iconography to surface the song's underlying themes of disappointment and loneliness. Director notes: The 'Crooked Teeth' entry in the Directions video album was directed by Rob Schrab and produced by Kerri Kleiner and Heidi Herzon at Oil Factory production company. The video is described as an 'extremely charming and playful mixed media' piece, standing in stark contrast to the more serious tone of other videos in the Directions collection. Schrab, serving as director and animator, structured the video around three fantasy characters, a robot, a dragon, and a pirate, as surrogates for the performing band members (the band itself does not appear in any Directions video). Each character carries a back story of grave disappointment, thematically echoing the song's lyrical exploration of loneliness and dashed expectations. The video premiered on MTVU on February 6, 2006, and was released as part of the full Directions DVD on April 11, 2006 on Atlantic Records. The Directions project as a whole was nominated for Best Long Form Music Video at the 2007 Grammy Awards.