Image
Video Premiere

New Zealand New Wave Crooner Jonathan Bree Debuts Video for “Pre-Code Hollywood”

There’s no freedom left in spеaking your mind
If you want a career to get by
Tricky business being a troubadour
Now we’re living through 1984

Alarmed by scandals, indecency, and the sexual freedom of the Jazz Age threatening the moral fibres (and pocketbooks) of America, the head honchos of Hollywood (and a team of Puritanical wet blankets) enforced The Hays Code, a set of highly restrictive industry guidelines for films made between 1934-1968. The strict enforcement of The Hays Code and the tightening public relations noose on actors in the Hollywood studio system dictated and transformed public discourse for decades; its ripple effects affected everything from race relations, to LGBTQ acknowledgement, to gender roles in the United States and beyond. With such intense censorship controlling the mass media, the freewheeling, laissez-faire culture of the 1910s-20s – and the nitrate fires destroying 90% of pre-Code films – erased not only a significant part of progressive history, but it also stifled the very language we expressed.

New Zealand new wave crooner Jonathan Bree (The Brunettes) addresses the concurrent generational gap in language with an incredible new single called “Pre-Code Hollywood” from his fifth studio album of the same name, set to be released digitally on April 14th, followed by a vinyl release on May 12th, via Lil’ Chief Records. The song also features guitar work from the legendary Nile Rodgers (Chic, David Bowie).

The accompanying music video, directed by Bree himself, is a work of performance art. Performing in masks erasing their very identities, the song, which attacks a code enforced to control the morality of a populace, is especially subversive coming from a band playing on a fictional version of Top of the Pops. (Dick Driver, from the influential music video show Radio With Pictures, makes a cameo.)

The lyrics paint a dystopian picture of the 2020s Hays Code: a dogmatic policing of language, and censorship of free artistic expression in the name of progression. We are at a dangerous precipice, where we could potentially lose sight of where change does good, and where it becomes smothering and unforgiving. How will that affect us in years to come? We already have the road map.

Watch “Pre-Code Hollywood” below:

Pre-Code Hollywood is out April 14th via Lil’ Chief Records.

Follow Jonathan Bree:

Alice Teeple

Alice Teeple is a photographer, multidisciplinary artist, and writer. She is not in Tin Machine.

Recent Posts

  • Art

Darkwave Trio Corlyx Colour Outside The Lines in Their New Single “Zombie Kid” — Plus Announce New Album “Purple Pain”

Darkwave trio Corlyx is a band that boldly colors outside the lines of traditional genre conventions, redefining the contours and…

11 hours ago
  • Art

French Synth Act Minuit Machine Returns With the Video for Their Resilient New Single “Hold Me”

They way they tore me apart Like I’m a corpse they wanna ditch They way they sold me for parts…

13 hours ago
  • Bands

Ballerinas Twirl in the Video for Los Angeles Post-Punk Artist Indiana Bradley’s Luminous New Single “Silent Moon”

It is a quiet devastation, a weight that presses without end. The realization unfolds not in a sharp moment but…

2 days ago
  • Song Premiere

Karolina Bnv Reimagines Classic New Beat with “Germany Calling”

In the history of new beat, there are few more memorable samples than "Germany calling." Taken from a Lord Haw-Haw…

2 days ago
  • Bands

Stella Rose Debuts Video for Smoldering Alt-Rock Anthem “HOLLYBABY”

Today, New York City's rising singer-songwriter Stella Rose drops her latest single and lyric video for HOLLYBABY, the title track…

2 days ago
  • Bands

Kim Deal Serenades a Flamingo in Her Surreal Video for “Nobody Love You More”

Perfect hosts and room ghosts shout I don't care what they say They can fight it out I mean to…

2 days ago
Sticky Footer Banner with Close Button