Milwaukee’s Iron Pizza occupies a warped, whacked-out wavelength where every broken thrift shop kiddie keyboard is an instrument to be treasured, and where songs like “Stoopid Drugged Up Monkees” exist. The band has been making its own peculiar no-wave electro ditties since 2014, but until now, it hasn’t dipped its toes into the video realm. Enter the new video for “The End,” which is exactly the kind of video you’d expect from Iron Pizza—which is to say it’s wonderful.
Directed by Nathan Lee Riddle, the video finds the members of Iron Pizza peace-ing out of a self-help group and drifting off into their own Technicolor video dream. “The road gets longer and longer / When does it end / I need to be stronger / I can’t go on,” sings frontman Jarred Nonnemacher before flying through the green-screened sky like a shaggy-haired Superman.
Director Riddle recently helmed the video for Soup Moat’s “Band Practice”/”Uptowner Girl.” Not coincidentally, a new Soup Moat/Iron Pizza split cassette is out today on Gloss Records. (You can stream it here.) The Iron Pizza portion of the split features re-recorded songs (including “The End”) from 2014’s Picasio. According to Gloss: “Both bands were originally supposed to have separate split releases with other bands, Soup Moat with the now seemingly defunct Fuck of Seagulls, and Iron Pizza with jazz-folk band New Boyz Club. When things didn’t work out as planned, the two bands came together with their respective sides, both produced and recorded by Harrison Colby at the old Klement’s Sausage Factory.”
A release show for the cassette is set for tonight at Circle-A. Due to a band injury, Soup Moat won’t be playing, though fellow Gloss artist Marielle Allschwang will be filling in. Not bad!