Premiere: Bel Holiday hosts haunting backyard session for new song, ‘Devil on Your Shoulder’

There’s a magical potency to Bel Holiday‘s voice. She makes the kinds of intricate choices that signal not only a deep trust with herself but an endless wealth of musical knowledge. She combs over her melodies with a jet-black dazzle, embellished around the edges with silk and a twinge of jazz, and her confidence in coloring outside the lines soaks her recordings. With a Backyard Session, she retools “Devil on Your Shoulder” with a rootsier echo, uprooting the base of the official release for a more evocative cleansing.

“I cry humanity / Succumb to misery / As it’s gonna be / I’ve got to say goodbye,” she turns a battle cry to the sky, hanging thick with dark, swirling clouds and snowfall of ash. Only guitar in tow, Holiday flexes her wondrous scat skills, and while that’s certainly present on her recording, leading into her debut Watermelon EP, due later this year, it is within such a setting that allows for a more visceral intent. Electricity shoots from her vocals, yet there remains a beautiful and relaxed fluidity to her performance.

In writing “Devil on Your Shoulder,” she exorcises a past relationship’s sour taste and chooses to reclaim her dignity and worth. She gathers up petals of her heart and tosses them into the wind. Thus, Holiday takes flight like never before. “I felt that what I craved was more than what he could provide me,” she says of the relationship.

The visual was filmed over 4th of July weekend in Fort Tryon in Washington Heights. “In spite of the chaos of that day, I always feel more connected to myself surrounded by ethereal botany and architecture,” she offers B-Sides & Badlands over email. “I feel like this acoustic version of the song captures the way I hear the song even more accurately than the original version on my upcoming EP.”

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