Video: Moon Honey, ‘Mask Maker’

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Moon Honey (photo by Sheva Kafai)

On “Mask Maker” Jess Joy makes vocal leaps from mood to mood as she sings, “mad glad bad sad, mad glad bad sad” like a mystical siren facing her existential crisis in a puddle of glitter tears, with guitarist Andrew Martin there to sweep them up in his guitar vortex. This stand-out track appears on Moon Honey‘s new album, “Mixed Media on Woman,” produced by John Goodmanson (Blonde Redhead, Sleater Kinney, Death Cab). Out Sept 4, it’s the band’s second full-length to date, joining their 2013 debut, “Hand-Painted Dream Photographs.”

In addition to constructing a surreal four-faced mask, Joy directed and stitched together the “Mask Maker” stop motion video, shot by her sister Krimsey Ramsey and Colleen Louise Barry, partially during Joy’s 2016 stay at the Sedona Summer Colony in Arizona. It was necessary to harness a woman’s point of view, both behind and in front of the camera. “Music videos sexualizing and objectifying women’s bodies for entertainment are a dime a dozen, so it was very important to me in investigating that theme to focus on expressing the internal experience of an exploited woman, as opposed to the external mask created to appease others,” explains Joy. “The consumption of women is usually presented as pleasurable for all parties involved, but for someone socialized as a woman, it can often feel more complex than that. For me, a dangerous cocktail of excitement, shame, rage, joy, sadness, confusion, and heavy self-judgment is the price tag attached to exploring and expressing my own sexuality. I want others to see the pain that we so often suppress and keep hidden when we are taken advantage of.”

||| Watch: “Mask Maker”

||| Previously: “That Dog,” “Moon Honey Loves L.A.” (A Buzzbands LA Playlist), “Betta Fish,” “The Cathedral”