Video: Son Lux, ‘All Directions’

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sonlux
Son Lux

Ryan Lott wrote the songs for his recently released Son Lux album, “Brighter Wounds” (City Slang), in the year after the Trump election, during which his first child was born and he also lost a close friend to cancer. The songs on this, his fifth album, carry the weight of those emotional forces colliding. With string sections that rise and fade like dark waves around Lott’s anguished voice, “All Directions” is intense. And the video packs a gut-punch. Directed by frequent collaborator Nathan Johnson, with cinematography by Steve Yedlin ( who shot “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” no less), the black and white video clocks in at almost ten minutes. Actor Tom Cullen (“Black Mirror,” “Downton Abbey”) plays a man who snaps. It’s unclear why, but he pulls away from his wife, played by Tatiana Maslany (“Orphan Black,” “Stronger”), and, following some biblical cues, he takes his son up a mountain for a sacrifice.

“In making this video, we wanted to explore a simple question,” Johnson says. “Is it possible for a father’s core humanity to fracture his constructed certainty? In a history of violence, might there be a break in the cycle? Instead of a wound of aggression, a wound of sacrifice. A Brighter Wound.” 

||| Watch: “All Directions”

||| Live: Son Lux perform tonight at The Regent. Tickets