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In the wake of MGMT and Amazing Baby, a whole NYC-via-Wesleyan clique has emerged, including the dance-pop parody band Boy Crisis, whose founding member, Tal Rozen, as a prospective student, slept on MGMT frontman/mastermind Andrew VanWyngarden’s dorm-room floor. “I remember he had all these Phish posters on the wall,” Rozen recalls of the digs. “I was like, ‘Who is this Teva-wearing motherfucker?'”
When Rozen finally matriculated at Wesleyan, his freshman-year roommate soon became his Boy Crisis bandmate: Victor Vazquez, himself half of stoner-rap duo Das Racist, they of the hilariously mundane summer-’09 blog smash “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.” Boy Crisis, whose debut record is due early next year, traffics in the same sort of surrealist silliness: The chorus to infectious single “Dressed to Digress” goes, “You can do me like Bruce Springsteen/Ask the swim team/Pass the string beans.”
That clique isn’t confined to musicians either. Filmmaker Ray Tintori has built a promising early career on his contributions to the MGMT’s video library, including the psychedelic “Time to Pretend” clip. He recently returned to Wesleyan with Boy Crisis to shoot a clip for “Dressed to Digress,” a clever satirization of pop stardom, running neon splatter patterns across Middletown’s drab backdrop as Boy Crisis’s members fly across the screen, dancing pseudo-sexily. Catch the real-life version this Wednesday at the 786 party at Purdy Lounge, which will host Boy Crisis’s first Miami show.
