Sharon Van Etten has kept busy between the release of her most recent record — 2014’s Are We There — and her next one — Remind Me Tomorrow, which drops on January 18 via Jagjaguwar. Aside from having a child, acting in The OA, and going to school for psychology, she also scored Katherine Dieckmann’s movie Strange Weather. Now those two have collaborated once again, this time on Van Etten’s new video for “Jupiter 4.” The clip fits in with the eerie song, and Van Etten says that the mood she was going for in the black and white video is “apocalyptic mom”:
“I had been looking forward to collaborating with Katherine again since finishing our work together on her film in 2016. Since wrapping the film, she has not only been a guiding force in my work, but a light and guiding force in my life as well, sharing with me stories of how she and her husband made it work with two kids as artists living in New York and encouraging me to return to my music after my son was born. I asked if she would ever want to make a music video for me. She asked what the mood would feel like and I simply said ‘apocalyptic mom.’ And with that, she said ‘Absolutely.’ That’s why I love her so much.”
Meanwhile, Dieckmann says of the clip:
“Getting to make a video for ‘Jupiter 4’ was such a gift that Sharon gave to me. The song is a fever dream, a spell cast in the name of obsession. I was hypnotized by it when I first heard it, and have never stopped being hypnotized by it – and by now I have probably heard it over a hundred times, maybe more. The trick was to figure out how to match the power of the song with visuals that could serve its ideas without spelling any of them out. I decided right away to work in an inky black-and-white palette and use raw elements (water, fire, earth, mist, dirt, summertime’s lush meadows and blooms) as a natural support for Sharon, and shoot her as a strong sculptural presence in space, to accompany the deeply immersive quality of the track.
Sharon melded herself effortlessly to every natural location, and delivered a sync performance that was so passionate and vulnerable that it struck silent everyone who was lucky enough to see it happen. It was a magical shoot, one meant to honor ‘Jupiter 4”s combination of brooding ambience with searing declarations of passion. I still have to ask myself, is the love ‘so real,’ or is it actually unreal? The beauty of the song, and hopefully of the video too, is that it lets that mystery be.”
Watch the video for “Jupiter 4” above.
Remind Me Tomorrow is out 01/18 via Jagjaguwar. Pre-order it here.
