Who is #1? When it comes to top-level Somerville spook rock, there can be only one answer: Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling.

Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling springs new video on an unsuspecting world

By Jim Clark

Just when you thought it was safe to surf YouTube again, an aggressive-subversive phenomenon jumps up to bite you on the backside once more. This time it just might tickle.

Somerville’s own Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling, a quirky, ultra-cool, and decidedly enigmatic artistic force has released yet another music video offering, First We Take Manhattan.

DNFMOMD is a female-fronted duo of drums, vocals, and bass. The band’s name and songs are all inspired by the 60’s cult spy-fi TV show The Prisoner. Sophia Cacciola – the “female front” – is accompanied by Michael J. Epstein, and together they evoke a diverse range of musical influences. As they put it, “We’re loud, arty, minimalist rock working in the realm of proto-punk/new wave/no wave bands and dark songwriters like Joy Division, Einsturzende Neubauten, The Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth, Diamanda Galás, Nina Hagen, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, PJ Harvey, and Leonard Cohen.”

The band’s name itself is a direct lift from one of The Prisoner’s episode titles. The group is on a not-so-secret mission to create songs and accompanying videos based on individual episodes of the show. 2011’s Episode 1 – Arrival was a musical and visual tour-de-force, taking over two years to produce and involving some 25 creative artists. Recreations of The Prisoner’s opening sequence are painstakingly rendered, while placing Cacciola and Epstein into the action seamlessly. Fans of the TV show will be very impressed.

The newest video may not involve quite the same level of production values, but the spirit of the piece follows through their established modus operandi. According to DNFMOMD, First We Take Manhattan is an original, tongue-in-cheek, spy-caper narrative produced and directed by Killer Suit Creative Media’s Glenn di Benedetto (http://killersuitpictures.com/) that playfully examines expectation and limits context to allow the viewer to question meaning and morality until the full, grandiose scale is revealed in its final moments. Much of the video was shot in and around Somerville.

The video pays tribute to spy television of the past with thematic similarity to the sci-fi reveals of the odder episodes of The Avengers, the slow-paced preparation sequences of Mission: Impossible, and of course, the good vs. evil ambiguity of The Prisoner. It is the first original-narrative video by DNFMOMD.

The band is two thirds of the way through its project to write and record a song for each of the 17 episodes of The Prisoner. Their second EP, Questions Are a Burden to Others, was released in June. They expect to continue in this effort throughout the remainder of the year.

Other videos and more information – information – can be found on their Web site at: http://donotforsake.com/.

Be seeing you.