Premiere: Lexie Roth Debuts New Video For “Western Skies”
Watch the Video Below
Singer/songwriter Lexie Roth is today sharing the official video for her new single, “Western Skies,” premiering with Under the Radar. Roth’s father, guitarist Arlen Roth, played with legendary singer/songwriters, including Bob Dylan, James Taylor, Simon and Garfunkel, The Bee-Gees, and their influence shines on her latest effort, entwined with elements from west coast AM radio rock, soul, and folk.
And, much like those influences, Roth was inspired with her latest single by the seemingly endless expanse of the western skyline and the deeply personal stories held within. Roth captures those stories in her crystalline vocals, ringing out over top of a spacious ambling instrumental. She’s also joined by a vocal contribution from Willy Mason, filling the space with his evocative rumble, along with the twang slide guitar from Arlen Roth.
For Roth’s latest track, open roads and character portraits were not the only inspiration though; she equally drew from the all-too present pain of the pandemic. As Roth explains, “I wrote Western Skies after spending a significant time on the west coast and on the road driving across the country, over six times now. There is a certain innate grief that comes over me when driving through small desolate towns. I wanted to imagine what my personal pain would feel like through the lens of a husband being widowed by his beloved wife and being left to raise their children without her. I wanted to depict how moving it is for him to see her light and strength in their children and how so many of us muster the strength to soldier on after we lose our loved ones and irreplaceable life partners…A comforting notion to me is that our loved ones who have crossed over are indeed watching and are indeed a presence to gain solace from.”
The accompanying video, directed by acclaimed director David Henry Gerson, expands on this story. David explains, “This song deals with the loss of a mother, and a father struggling to balance his grief with his hope for the future of his children. My father passed away several months before we began collaborating on the project, and this project provided my first opportunity to hold a camera again and begin to craft images that spoke to that loss.
We were also in the midst of our nation losing over half a million people to Covid. So, grief, mourning and loss were everywhere - and we were fortunate to have our friendship and trust in each other to start finding a means to express these losses in images and movement of the camera.
The concept for the video came from the idea that the spirit of the wife/mother was guiding the viewer from beginning to end to bring the protagonist and the viewer to the key memory of joy she wanted him to see. The camera begins panning down, and then as she turns her head to the right it continues panning right in every shot consistently until it stops at a climactic moment in the story. I had never seen a film cut consistently between shots moving in the same direction throughout the story, and I wanted to give the audience a sort of dizzying feeling, of being guided through memories, so that when the camera eventually pauses its motion, we almost have to hold on to our seats to balance ourselves. It’s a technique I had never tried before, and for me the joy of shooting these short stories as music videos is the opportunity - both to collaborate with amazing artists like Lexie and Zach - but also to try out new visual experiments. The result, I hope - you, viewers, tell us - is deeply affecting.”
Check out the song and video below.
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