Jessy Lanza has a new video for the track “Face,” her second single from the artist’s upcoming All The Time LP due out July 24th via Hyperdub. The song was inspired by a ride on the NYC subway. She explains:
“I was fantasizing about what everyone was thinking based on their expressions. I found myself projecting my own feelings onto the strangers I was looking at. I went home and wrote the lyrics imagining that the commuters were having telepathic conversations with each other. The questions I imagined them asking each other oscillated from sexual to confrontational: ‘Baby is it just enough? Tell me do you want it all? Baby are you feeling tough? Feeling tougher more than not?“
After recording vocals, as well as bass and drum patterns, the track was sent on to Lanza’s longtime songwriting partner Jeremy Greenspan (Junior Boys) who added the cut’s lush synth parts and other sonic ephemera via modular synthesizer. The nimble and upbeat results feature shuffling bass and fast-firing drum lines, with the artist’s idiosyncratic vocal appeal shining throughout.
The video for the track is directed by Winston Case, and it was shot while he and Lanza traveled across the US after the musician’s European tour was canceled due to the pandemic. She explains:
“Our apartment lease was up and we couldn’t rent another place because of quarantine restrictions. We packed what we could into my van and drove to San Francisco to stay with family. We really wanted to make a video for ‘Face’ so we used our immediate surroundings and a couple of lights Winston managed to fit in the van.”
The video features creative lighting choices throughout, but without a proper crew to help shoot the video, Case had to enlist the help of his sister and mother. Making use of what they had on hand, a hunting flashlight to blind feral pigs as well as several LEDs smuggled in the van, the group creates stylized settings for Lanza and her curiously co-opted sofa pillow.
