Video: Mujercitas Terror - "Excavaciones"

Punk hits often turn into anthems but are rarely part of the zeitgeist. This doesn’t seem to be the case for “Excavaciones,” the title track from Mujercitas Terror’s terrific 2011 album. This flesh-carving hit broke through just a little too late for best-of-the-year consideration but has turned into one of the few rock hits blooming across Iberoamerica this year. Not that they’re anywhere near the success of Napoléon Solo or Hello Seahorse!, but it sure is a favorite among music curators and tastemakers. The Argentine band keeps the momentum going with a seemingly minimalistic black & white clip that is anything but a minimal effort. Director Peko Docimo employed Hitchcockian cinematic elements (crane shots, swish pans, and low-key lighting) to track down the three subjects and their instruments–everything as part of a deeply pronounced diegetic sound that is pointing toward the transcendental.

Video: Mujercitas Terror - "Actriz"

It wasn’t too long ago that we realized, after failing to properly get behind Mujercitas Terror's great 2011 sophomore release, Excavaciones, just how much this was a band somber-yet-savvy enough for a strong underground cult following, but that still had plenty of mystique to successfully cruise into pop audiences. Already over a decade old and coming off a successful Mexican tour, the porteño trio made use of it to release (via cutting edge label Vale Vergas Discos) a split 7” with gorey industrial virtuosos Mueran Humanos (whose female half actually used to play keyboards in Mujercitas Terror) and team up with video director Txema Novelo for a purple-hued take on their upbeat post-punk number “Actriz.” Evoking Novelo’s previous clips’ improvisational style and loose framing, the video has something of João Pedro Rodrigues’ To Die Like a Man’s red-filtered woodland tableau scene, but with its characters indistinguishably appearing as either unprotected drifters (“Ya nadie cuidará de mí, tampoco de ti”), or maybe just esoteric paganists (“No mires hacia abajo, ahí van delicados tus chicos lastimados").

Mujercitas Terror - Excavaciones

Earlier this month we wrote about an editorial guilt for not giving Félix y Los Clavos’ Continuara the amount of attention it deserved. Well, there’s another superb Argentinean album out there that we simply failed to come across. Mujercitas Terror’s Excavaciones is so good that we just can’t keep on posting 2012 material without at least winking at it through this tiny blurb. Excavaciones is, like the title suggests, a down-to-the-bone excavation to gnarled sensibilities and wounded shoegaze. How we’ve failed to acknowledge this band for years is a bit discomforting but it’s also stimulating to know there’s so much industrial music out there we still need to hunt for. The good news is we’ll get a chance to redeem ourselves soon as Mujercitas Terror will share a 7’’ split with the great Mueran Humanos, and they’ll be doing it that through Vale Vergas Discos (Juan Cirerol, Mentira Mentira). The scene as we know it is bound to strip off its couture and go darker, hopefully for the better.

♫♫♫ "Excavaciones"