Video debut: Lovely Socialite, “Glass”

The Madison-formed sextet plays November 3 at the Memorial Union Play Circle.

Listening to Lovely Socialite is all about enjoying a strange clash of tendencies. The six-piece instrumental band—formed in Madison, but with members currently spread between here, Milwaukee, and Detroit—wraps together ideas from jazz, rock, and experimental music, functions as a tight and punchy unit while working in an unwieldy instrumental lineup that includes cello, vibraphone, trombone, and the pipa (a Chinese stringed instrument), and, on its latest EP, DoubleShark, tries to turn all that contradiction into some its most tense, hard-driving, concise work yet.

While Lovely Socialite has a great deal of emotional range, a lot of moments in its music feel simultaneously playful and sinister. That dynamic certainly comes through in Milwaukee-based filmmaker Joe Ludwig‘s new video for DoubleShark’s first track, “Glass.” The video features half the band (trombone player Corey Murphy, cellist/guitarist Pat Reinholz, and drummer Mike Koszewski) and centers around the adventures of an irrepressibly chipper milkman. Filmed in the Milwaukee suburbs of Greendale and West Bend, the video takes place in a world where people really like their weird little bottles of milk, but maybe all is not well. People might actually be flipping out and chanting “MILK MILK MILK.” Or something. I can’t quite explain it, but if I could, it wouldn’t be Lovely Socialite.

See the video below; Lovely Socialite will be playing this Friday at the Memorial Union’s Play Circle theater as part of the Greater Madison Jazz Consortium’s concert series. For more about the band and the DoubleShark EP, you can listen to our podcast interview with Lovely Socialite from earlier this year.