Singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Laura Gibson has released a second track from her new album, Goners, which will be released on October 26 via City Slang. “Domestication” comes accompanied with a cinematic new video, co-directed by Gibson and Alicia Rose, filmed in pastel hues that belie an uneasy narrative.
Listen to / watch “Domestication” below:
Gibson explains, “The song ‘Domestication’ took form as a fable, the story of wolf trying and failing to live as a woman. I was thinking a lot about shape-shifting. Wolves and dogs seemed to haunt my lyrics on ‘Goners.’ The fable form gave me the language and the bravery to explore more personal things. In short: Still, at times, though I know better, I’ll catch myself thinking in terms of what I should desire of womanhood instead of what I actually desire. I catch myself feeling I am failing at something, at some ideal I was never actually aiming for. I finished these lyrics a year ago. It’s strange to release the song now, when it feels so much is coming to a head. So much has cracked open for women, in the year since writing ‘Domestication.’ So much remains the same.
Though I’d meant ‘domestication’ in the animal sense, when it came time to make the video, I liked the idea of using the term in the homemaking sense. I’d been obsessed with this photo I’d found of the pastel women of the FLDS cult, and wanted to build a world and a story around the aesthetic, something like the speculative societies of Margaret Atwood or Ursula Le Guin. At the end of the story, I wanted the women to act like wolves.”