Jeff Tweedy is giving Popeye the Sailor Man some competition for Olive Oyl’s heart. The spinach-loving sailor and the rest of the gang star in Wilco’s new animated music video for “Dawned on Me.”
On Sunday Popeye.com posted a new comic strip featuring caricatures of lead singer Tweedy, bassist John Stirratt, guitarist Nels Cline, multi-instrumentalists Pat Sansone and Mikael Jorgensen, and drummer Glenn Kotche. The rock band even got its own ship – the S.S. Wilco – and its very own brand of namesake spinach. The art was created by Frank Caruso and Ned Sonntag.
Now the band has been turned into animated cartoons alongside Popeye, Olive Oyl, Swee’ Pea, Wimpy and Bluto. The video, which was directed by Darren Romanelli, is a collaboration between Wilco’s label, dBpm Records, and King Features. It marks the first new Popeye cartoon since 2004’s “Popeye’s Voyage: The Quest for Pappy,” as well as the first new hand-drawn, frame-by-frame drawing since the Popeye and Son series from 1987. It is also one of the first music videos Wilco has put out since 1999.
“Dawned on Me” hails from Wilco’s eighth studio album, 2011’s The Whole Love.
Click here for WilcoSpinach.com, which has links to the comic, cartoon and Wilco’s recent iTunes session.