Luluc's new video for "Tangled Heart" is a grainy, melancholy ode to New York and the city's remarkable community of artists.
In a montage of mostly black-and-white found footage, people come and go, shuffling to work or school, or wander the streets as nameless faces. They're anonymous on their own, but collectively offer a breathtaking and prosaic portrait of humanity.
Zoë Randell and Steve Hasset, the beautiful voices behind Luluc's acoustic ballads, appear as silhouettes over the cityscape. "By the window in the afternoon," they sing, "I sit and watch the kids leaving from school. Little packs falling down their backs." It's a simple, relatively small moment that pulses with life.
The duo was filmed against a brilliant white background, in photographer Robert Mapplethorpe's former studio. "It was an incredible experience to meet Joelle Shefts, the artist who lives in and has worked in this space since the same time as Robert," the band tells us via email. "We had recently read Patti Smith's book Just Kids when we by chance met a friend who knows Joelle and stays with her when she's in New York. The light and space is just as Patti describes it in her book."
"Tangled Heart" appears on Luluc's album Passerby, out on Sub Pop Records.
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