Rock musicals about rock stars are almost as tiring as independent films about independent filmmakers. They’re too self-involved and too self-satisfying, and they typically have nothing for an objective viewer to grab hold of. But at least with rock musicals, if the audience can dig the music, they can maybe dig the movie, too. This has been the case, for me at least, with such films as Velvet Goldmine and Hedwig and the Angry Inch, neither of which I would have been so into were it not for their excellent glam rock soundtracks. And now the same goes for Rainbow Around the Sun, a neat little low-budget musical fantasy, which interestingly enough also has a touch of glam in its songs, about a very cliché band leader and his very cliché drinking problem and his very cliché story of heartbreak.

Here, more than the songs, though, it’s the musical numbers, many of which work on their own as great music videos, that really kept me interested. That tired tale of the troubled, tortured artist/poet/rock star is merely a thin thread for Rainbow Around the Sun, which was adapted from an autobiographical album of the same name by Matthew Alvin Brown, who also stars in the film as singer-guitarist-drunk Zachary Blasto. The plot is like an afterthought, concocted only to connect the album tracks and their “videos”, and though the songs seem like they’re supposed to comment on the story, it’s really apparent that it came about the other way around, that the story is in fact meant only to put the songs into a context. I’d probably have enjoyed it as much, if not more, though, without the loose narrative and its underdeveloped scenes. The film could still have been what it actually is anyway: a cinematic concept album.

Anyone who has seen the Michael Jackson film Moonwalker (which I think is actually very underrated) knows how weak a musical can be that forces the story. In Rainbow Around the Sun, we’re expected to follow the predictable aspirations of Blasto, and his fantastically realized dreams. He’s just broken up with his girlfriend, Debbie (Jamie Buxton), he works a crap job as a counterperson (or something) at some kind of take-out place (it looks like a fast food joint, but maybe it’s a bakery?), and his father is on his deathbed. Each time the film brings us back into this sad sack, sorry-for-itself story we’re anxiously anticipating the next dream sequence. Even those songs/numbers that take place and are performed in the “awake” scenes are pretty uninteresting. Of course, that’s likely the point, that Blasto is a much better artist in his fantasy than in real life.

What’s so amazing about these fantasies? They’re delightfully theatrical spectacles. In most of them, Brown/Blasto is a vaudevillian showman starring in economically lavish productions that call to mind Eddie Izzard’s “Mr. Kite” number in Across the Universe (I know a lot of people hated that number, but it was one of the only parts of that film I enjoyed) and Squirrel Nut Zippers’ “Hell” video. In others, there’s a surrealist aspect that could be considered Michel Gondry-lite, while in one, an actual music video (in Blasto’s imagination), is like a nod to The Gorillaz. My favorite number, though, is one near the end: it’s terribly art-school in the way it involves Blasto slow-dancing with ever-changing partners – each of those characters significant in the plot – but it is still beautifully done. And it made me realize that I’m actually a sucker for fantastical ballroom dances (it mostly reminded me of the end of City of Lost Children).

Certainly a lot of my enjoyment of Rainbow Around the Sun depended on a lot of subjectivity, but I also have a great deal of appreciation for how such an ambitious little film is so wonderfully executed. Low-budget, non-Hollywood musicals aren’t exactly a new idea, but they are still too underrepresented in the world of independent film. Despite my antipathy towards the idea of stringing the plot around the music, I would absolutely love to see other artists/bands make movies like this. They’re so much more entertaining than the video compilations, rock docs and concert docs we typically get from every other act. And, such as is the case for Matthew Alvin Brown (and his band Fellowship Students), it’s a much cooler way to get noticed. I’d likely have never heard of him/them without this film.