Video premiere: Clara-Nova, ‘Lives’

Kevin Bronson on May 21st, 2020

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In just 2 1/2 briskly paced minutes, the new video from avant-pop artist Clara-Nova says a lot about life — how our human circles expand and contract, how the road can be smooth or rough, how people can simply disappear. Maybe it’s that we don’t have a life, we have “Lives.”

“The song is about how we are all entwined. It is about connectedness,” says the woman behind Clara-Nova, French-American singer-songwriter Sydney Wayser. “It is about life chapters and about people who enter and leave our stories. I wrote this song on a long drive through the desert with my brother, Julian, years ago, and when we set out to make the video, we pulled from our original ideas of past life chapters, future life chapters and everything in between.

“This idea is also very much in my mind during this current moment of quarantine. I haven’t seen my friends, collaborators and family in many weeks and months at this point, but we will all come back together and color this life once again.”

The Julian Wayser-directed video features just two shots (the location for the second was the same Historic Filipinotown alley Tom Waits used for his “In The Neighborhood” video). Sydney Wayser is joined by as many as six dancers (counting the scuba divers) as she frolics through the scenes.

“Our main intention and purpose was fluidity,” Wayser says. “Life is fluid and as we venture down our path people come into our lives, events happen that are exciting or difficult… life happens.”

“Lives” is from the second of two EPs released by Clara-Nova in 2018, “The Golden Age,” which followed “The Iron Age.” The artist had originally intended to release a full-length in 2019 featuring the music from the two EPs, but those plans went sideways when Wayser’s mother was diagnosed with cancer and Sydney served as her caretaker for nine months. With her mother having beaten back the disease, Wayser plans to release the album this summer. March brought the release of the new Clara-Nova single “Flowers From the Moon.”

||| Watch: The video for “Lives”