LC VIDEO: Tender Forever Scoots 'round Portland

Just when you thought Tender Forever's Melanie Valera couldn't get any more adorable, she goes ahead and dons a suit made of Post-its and rides around our fair city on a scooter. Okay, maybe it's a motorcycle; I can't tell for sure, but scooters seem cuter—and Valera's certainly got a handle on cute.

Directed by Justin and Briana Lowe (also known as Portland's Bangs and Blurry) and shot on top of local advertising giant Wieden + Kennedy's deck last September, the video's nice and simple: "So We Could Deal" (from 2007's Wider) is a showcase for Valera's voice, and her direct delivery in the video—she sings it right to ya, with shots of our fair city whizzing by in the background and a slight breeze ruffling her Post-its—well suits the song's straightforward message and sparse production.

Though Valera herself seems a bit unsure of where to look (she glances at the bike's side-mirrors and gauges throughout), it only adds to the Olympia-based, Southern France-bred singer's charm. And, for me, it calls to mind a totally unrelated fave lyric from the Weakerthans' "Pamphleteer": "How I don't know what I should do/ With my hands when I talk to you/ How you don't know where you should look/ So you look at my hands."

Guess Valera looks at the ol' tachometer when she's feeling meek.



Links:
TenderSpace
Weiden + Kennedy
Bang and Blurry's video for Tender Forever's "The Magic of Crashing Stars"
Bang and Blurry's video for Tender Forever's "How Many," also in cahoots with W+K

Photo: by Heather Treadway, taken from TF's MySpace.