Premiere: Van Plating sinks into troubled waters for new video, ‘Too Late’

Relationships are rarely easy sailing. Storms will come, and the waves will crash violently agains the hull. Those aboard are then faced with a choice: to jump ship or endure for the long sea-bound haul ahead. Just as quickly, the clouds inevitably roll away to reveal baby blue sky as serene and calm as the watery depths below. Rachel Plating, known professionally as Van Plating, forges a story of two lovers nearly pulled undertow from the storm’s clutches. With her song and video “Too Late,” premiering today, she wades neck-deep into the raging sea herself to properly contextualize the push and pull. “So, tell me what’s wrong / Maybe I’ll get it right this time,” she observes, gazing out of the eyes of one lover to another.

The visual, directed by Connor O’Brien, alongside director of photography Campbell Rice, sparkles beneath a hazy filter – as if Plating is calling, siren-like, from the other side. “Too Late” was the very first co-write for her new album, and it’s lyrical heft stands in contrast to the gleaming, pop-configured production, a creative choice to elevate it even further. “It’s a song that, lyrically speaking, surfaces from a very turbulent period of my life. It’s a love song for a couple that’s leaning into a tough, difficult moment in their story and fighting it out, determined to stay together and love each other for better or worse,” Plating writes to B-Sides & Badlands over email.

A piano’s roots pulse and sprout around her, and Plating’s voice climbs through the foliage to deliver a gut-punching hook. “It’s the most pop I’ve ever gone, and I have to 100 percent credit Bradley [Walden, most known as a member of Emarosa] for that. He wrote the piano part that ties the verses together and at first it threw me for a loop (in a great way),” she says, “and sort of immediately, I was out of my rut and former habits of writing, and I think the energy in the song speaks to that. It’s fresh and full of intensity and as a vocalist, just crazy fun to belt at the top of your lungs.”

Decorating in percussion, courtesy of Courtney Ballard (Emarosa, Tori Kelly), and trembling string work, the emotional strands are wound around one another. The product is a rich and thick composition with a distinctly “symphonic vibe,” offers Plating. “I played all of the string parts on a teeny tiny student viola I rented from a shop in LA and my own violin.”

The accompanying video morphs from a pretty straightforward concept into an artistic accomplishment. Rainstorms a common occurrence in everyday Florida life, Plating used the unexpected downpour to her advantage – the opening few frames immerse you in a splashy, underwater world. “I texted the guys [of production company The Collection Media] and said, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to sing in a Florida rain storm?’ To which they responded, ‘YES! What if the storm came inside? To mirror the storm in the relationship we’re talking about in the song?’ I said, ‘Let’s do it!'”

“And within a week, we were filming in three different locations across town. The set was populated by volunteers – all creatives and friends from here in Lakeland. I ended up with a pretty intense case of walking pneumonia after singing in all that wind and rain, but in the end, it was totally worth it.”

“Too Late” is another primer for Van Plating’s self-titled debut LP, out this Friday (November 15).

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