Last updated on September 11, 2017
(Sorry about the downtime! Something got corrupted and we were out of commission for a while. It’s good to be back. Many thanks to Chris Krycho for the technical assistance needed in getting us back online.)
Last year I was totally enamored with JPH’s Songs of Loss. The album is a singular wonder: a fully-realized turn of a musician putting strong songwriting powers to the difficult subject of personal grief. The sonics are adventurous but humble, the lyrics are raw, and the whole product comes off as a unique experience. There are a lot of unexpected left turns, sonically. JPH has given me the great honor of premiering the video for “Song 7” from the album today. Like the album, it’s a hushed, delicate piece that throws a different light (or lack thereof) on the subject of mourning.
The video is simple: a dancer in an almost-dark room moves gracefully. Sarah Ingel is never seen head to toe; the camera frames her at odd angles and casts her motions in unusual ways. The music takes its time starting (almost fifteen seconds of silence), and then ends mid-video; Ingel continues dancing in silence for almost two minutes after the song is over. She eventually fades away from the screen, flickering, here and there, and then gone. Grief does feel like that–it keeps going long after the events surrounding a death are over, emerging in fits and starts, in unexpected moments, in unexpected ways. It’s startling and even somewhat uncomfortable to keep watching a video in silence; that rupture of the normal further cements the connection between the video and its subject matter. It’s an unconventional music video for an unconventional album, and it works beautifully.
You can purchase the whole Songs of Loss album here. JPH is playing American Babylon this week (May 15-21), so you can catch his work there as well.