While we’ve come to know David Kilgour so intimately over the past few decades through his jangly guitar, the Dunedin Sounder and leader of the Heavy Eights has returned with a new agenda for recording his latest album. “I tended to shy away from too much guitar playing for a point of difference and to mix things up for myself a little,” he explains of Bobbie’s a girl. Instead, “It’s moody—as in low, subdued.”
To kick things off, Kilgour is sharing the single “Smoke You Right Out of Here” with a Rumur-directed video comprised of footage of subdued landscapes. “Smoke” is pretty heavy on the guitar, though it’s an acoustic twang that integrates itself into the Heavy Eights’ psych-lite Americana (does New Zealand have their own term for roots folk?). It’s the ideal soundtrack to a cross-country voyage, something Rumur’s Michael Galisnky may have picked up on when ideating a video component:
“Once we got the song, it sparked a lot of melancholy and movement, and we were drawn to use short pieces captured from all over the world, including a trip to New Zealand a couple summers ago,” the American photographer notes. “Oddly, after sending a rough cut to David, he shared older music videos that had some strikingly similar themes and images—so much so that he thought we’d been referencing them. Over the past couple of years, my collaborator Suki Hawley and I have been traveling a bit with our films and were able to grab stuff like a time lapse on the way to Piha beach near Auckland or spontaneous dancing at the Acropolis. We also shot more images close to home, like those in the meadow behind our house that are as current as last week. Somehow it all just fell together in a nice mash-up.”
Bobbie’s a girl is out September 20 on Merge. You can pre-order it here.
