Sylvan Esso – “Frequency”
In a couple of weeks, Sylvan Esso, the Durham-based duo of Mountain Man’s Amelia Meath and Megafaun’s Nick Sanborn, will release Free Love, their latest album of folksy electro-pop. Thus far, Sylvan Esso have shared the early singles “Ferris Wheel” and “Rooftop Dancing,” as well as the intro track “What If.” They’ve also made music videos for all of those tracks. Today, they’ve made another video for another song. This time, they’ve worked on the clip with one of their peers. Moses Sumney, a man who released his own ambitious album earlier this year, directed the duo’s video for their new track “Frequency.”
The new track “Frequency” is pretty minimal, with Meath singing over a tingly synth oscillation and no drums. In the video, we see her on a front lawn, locked into some sort of trancelike dance. As the song goes on, everyone around her gets sucked into that vortex and starts doing the same dance on the same lawn. It’s partly a heartwarming story about connection and partly a piece of inexplicable Lynchian weirdness. Check it out below.
In a press release, Sylvan Esso say:
We had a fantastic and rewarding time collaborating with our friend and fellow North Carolinian, Moses Sumney, on building a visual world for “Frequency.” He had such a beautiful vision for the project, one that ran parallel to the song’s initial source in a way that showed us new spaces it could inhabit. It’s a beautiful exploration of being together and apart at the same time — we feel it rings clearly in this moment.
Free Love is out 9/25 on Loma Vista.