Stream: Claire George, ‘Pink Elephants’

Kevin Bronson on March 31st, 2021

0

Claire George makes featherweight indie-pop heavy on the emotion and nuance. She won acclaim for her self-produced debut EP, “Bodies of Water,” in 2018 and has built from there.

But there’s heavy and there’s heavy — and the debut album that George introduces today, “The Land Beyond the Lights” (out May 21 via Cascine), is rooted in the most profound grief. Initially conceived in 2019 as (broadly) a collection of dance-pop about heartbreak, the album’s raison d’etre took a turn when George lost a friend, an ex-lover, to substance abuse.

Beneath the airy pulse of her new single “Pink Elephants,” George sings: “I don’t blame you, I know how it feels / with tusk and teeth gnawing at your heels.”

Of the video, directed by Chelsi Johnston, George says it’s “an expression of my desperation to save someone who I loved and lost to addiction. The storyline is meant to depict the lengths to which one will go when they see a loved one losing a battle with substance abuse, but how ultimately, it can be heartbreakingly impossible to catch someone who is already so far gone.”

||| Stream: “Pink Elephants”