New Zealand singer Chelsea Jade isn’t as crazy as she looks in her video for “Visions,” off her Beacons EP, which came out Friday. With a sweater like a straight-jacket, piercing light blue eyes, and hair that’s inspired by Cameron Diaz in Being John Malkovich—“I look more like Miranda July, which I’m cool with,” she told me during a recent interview—the dream pop singer seems right at home in this abandoned building. But being someplace familiar isn’t what the video is about. Instead, refer to a little saying that goes, “the grass is always greener on the other side.”“[It’s about] desperately wanting to be anywhere that you aren’t, but nowhere else seems really appealing either,” she told me about the “Visions” clip, in which she runs from one setting to another, as represented by blown up pictures from her time as a photographer. Jade squirms, sprints and seizes, looking uncomfortable the entire time. “My body was like death after,” she said.Jade recorded much of Beacons in New York City, avoiding the “banal distractions” of Auckland, and she enjoys getting to leave town. “If you think about what you’re leaving behind, it’s quite poetic,” she said.Similarly, the song itself—with its haunting layered vocals and the occasional shock of a beat drop—deals with location and trying to make a relationship work even though neither person is willing to make an effort to follow the other. “Far far / I went too far / And you didn't have the heart / To accommodate it,” she sings on the track, a fiery crackle blanketing the whole thing.Chelsea just finished two showcases at the CMJ Music Marathon and is off to Tokyo, where is she is one of 60 artists selected for the Red Bull Academy in November. The video was directed by Alex Gandar. Check it out above.Follow Emilee Lindner on Twitter.
Advertisement