Last year, singer-songwriter Jenn Grant released her “intimate and otherworldly” sixth album, Paradise. It was a record that saw the Halifax artist become a more detailed storyteller, often spinning tales inspired by her vivid dreams. So it’s only fitting that her new music video for album cut “Lion With Me” is now getting a fantastically lush treatment that feels like we’re floating through Grant’s subconscious.
The video, directed by Christopher Mills, drifts around projections of Grant performing and navigating an ark-airplane hybrid filled with animals through stormy seas. Much like Grant, Mills sees and hears the track as a “comforting dream about finding the courage through music to brave the storm.”
“In these tumultuous times, we all need to go digging deep into the ark of our minds to find the lion we all have hiding in there somewhere,” Mills continued, via email. The video’s layered techniques are a signature style of Mills’, who has taken similar approaches to music videos for Leonard Cohen, Interpol and Ron Sexsmith.
Back in February, Grant told CBC Music this about “Lion With Me”: “This is a love song that I wrote for my husband. In the song I talk about shovelling, because we live at the bottom of this hill, and we shovel so much. I think it’s a bit of a metaphor for anything that is a struggle in your life and trying to get through it.” (Grant’s husband, collaborator and producer, Daniel Ledwell, also appears in the video, and sings on the track.)
Watch Jenn Grant’s music video for “Lion With Me” below.
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