A Grouper video for “Ode to the blue” has been shared. The new song is taken from her new album, Shade, out on October 22nd via Kranky. Director Dicky Bahto reveals this insight: “Liz sent me a love song in the middle of the worst part of the pandemic in Los Angeles to think about making a film for. I was depressed and scared and felt incapable of thinking. She mentioned picturing people kissing; and “maybe something in a graveyard.” I wanted to see my friends. I wanted to feel intimacy again. I thought: what if the film is just people making out in graveyards?”
Dicky continues: “In Evergreen Cemetery in Boyle Heights I found myself surrounded by graves for people who, like my own grandparents, had survived the Armenian and Assyrian genocide a little over a hundred years ago. After a year of fear over the pandemic, growing support for rightwing authoritarianism, and the escalating climate crisis—with a popular narrative that we’re living through the end of the world— I needed the reminder that the end of the world is always happening somewhere, and even if we don’t survive the end of our world, we might as well enjoy the pleasures of love. Watching my friends kiss was a hot, fresh breath direct from their mouths that made me feel a joy I hadn’t experienced in far too long.”
Watch & listen to “Ode to the blue” below: