Ahead of releasing their debut album via Idée Fixe Records on April 29, drone-hymn experimenters Joyful Joyful (a.k.a. Cormac Culkeen and Dave Grenon) have shared a new music video for "Oh Jubilation," the second single from the forthcoming self-titled effort.
According to Culkeen, the track — which follows the release of "Marrow" — is among the oldest of Joyful Joyful's repertoire, the first song they wrote after their last band broke up.
"It is as hopeful as anything I have ever written," they explained of the song in a release. "The first few times that I performed the song, I did it acapella, teaching the audience to hum the droning 'A' pitch that underpins the melody. I needed the help, and it came."
The self-produced and directed single-shot video finds Madeleine Shen Lopez performing the choreography of Katie Ewald in the wilderness. As the band tell it, they were looking specifically for a pregnant dancer, and reached out to Lopez when she was six months along. Finally meeting up to film in the ninth month of pregnancy, Lopez gave birth the day after the shoot.
Culkeen explained:
She dances for herself and for us, who are watching across the world in our own little lives. She is insistent and even ungraceful. She is alone in an unfathomable landscape, but of course she is not alone. There is the baby in her belly. There is the land itself, and the vaulted sky overhead. And there's us, tender and expectant too — watching the dancer kick up the dust. We get just close enough that we can see the taut fullness of Maddy's stomach and the sun shining on her brown braid. We leave her, still dancing, as small as a grain of sand, in a vast expanse of desert light.
Watch the video below.
Pre-order Joyful Joyful.
According to Culkeen, the track — which follows the release of "Marrow" — is among the oldest of Joyful Joyful's repertoire, the first song they wrote after their last band broke up.
"It is as hopeful as anything I have ever written," they explained of the song in a release. "The first few times that I performed the song, I did it acapella, teaching the audience to hum the droning 'A' pitch that underpins the melody. I needed the help, and it came."
The self-produced and directed single-shot video finds Madeleine Shen Lopez performing the choreography of Katie Ewald in the wilderness. As the band tell it, they were looking specifically for a pregnant dancer, and reached out to Lopez when she was six months along. Finally meeting up to film in the ninth month of pregnancy, Lopez gave birth the day after the shoot.
Culkeen explained:
She dances for herself and for us, who are watching across the world in our own little lives. She is insistent and even ungraceful. She is alone in an unfathomable landscape, but of course she is not alone. There is the baby in her belly. There is the land itself, and the vaulted sky overhead. And there's us, tender and expectant too — watching the dancer kick up the dust. We get just close enough that we can see the taut fullness of Maddy's stomach and the sun shining on her brown braid. We leave her, still dancing, as small as a grain of sand, in a vast expanse of desert light.
Watch the video below.
Pre-order Joyful Joyful.
