Premiere: Lila Blue presents nightmarish folk lullaby in new video, ‘Half of It’

The truth of the matter is heartbreak is rather maddening. It’s as if a knife-wielding maniac has carved out your chest, only leaving a bloodless heart to throb and swell, black and hardened. Harvesting folk music and dark traces of human existence, singer-songwriter Lila Blue submerges the listener in an unusually fantastical storybook of her pain – her music video for “Half of It,” premiering today, twists the bones and bends the back, altering even the viewer’s mental state. “I hear myself say thank you,” she chirps. She hangs in a purgatory of her own anguished creation; everything feels distorted and raw, and her breathy meditations cast a chill down down the back.

“You grew out your hair / And you no longer look like a child / But your hands still seem the same / So, I just hold on to that fact for a little while more,” she observes. Her voice is initially milky and smooth as silk, but appearances quickly ascend into a bizarro and unnerving landscape. It’s like Alice in Wonderland driven insane by her own emotions, and her inability to reign in the misery and rage punctures right into her skull, cerebrospinal fluid dripping to the floor.

The video, directed Steven Jaehnert, scrapes with intensity and terrifying images of grotesque theatre masks, and the cinematography creeps under the skin. Each frame is approached with great care and always aimed to shock the system. Artistically, the song, as much as the video, excavates similar themes as Weightless, a rock opera based on Roman poet Ovid’s Latin narrative poem titled Metamorphosis. Even as Blue appears to find relief – once the mask of her ex-lover finally drops – the crashing of dinner plates leaves a haunting impression.

“Half of It” samples Blue’s forthcoming new album, Leave Me Be.

Watch below:

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