Exclusive Video Premiere: ‘Hold It Together,’ HERS
ABOVE: HERS. IMAGE COURTESY OF LINDSAY TRAPNELL
Here, Portland, Oregon drama-fueled indie quartet HERS offers us the first look into the world of their upcoming LP, Youth Revisited, out June 4. The black-and-white, Oregon-coast-shot clip, directed by Lindsay Trapnell, stars frontwoman Melissa L. Amstutz, wherein the band admittedly “wanted to make a video where I played with a bronze giraffe, candles, and nail polish. And eggs and fire.” And yet the clip feels much weightier than that, especially given the song’s climaxing lyric: “I am your godless woman.”
Along with Amstutz, HERS consists of Rachel Tomlinson Dick, Ellen Wilde, and Cody Peterson. Though Amstutz and Dick have been jamming together since they were 15, and currently moonlight in a feminist punk band, the quartet is a relatively new cohort to the fertile Northwest music scene—think the varied instrumentation of Au, the precision of Port St. Willow, the melodrama of Mount Eerie.
“The song, ‘Hold It Together,’ contains a multitude of conscious and subconscious extremes in opposition with the other,” says Amstutz. “Belief vs. disbelief, known vs. unknown, past vs. present, even gay vs. straight—and another layer walks the line between, occupying that space, even though it’s uncomfortable. I wanted the video to reflect that internal struggle, to touch on the imperfectness of either reality, but to ultimately showcase the tremendous power a person can achieve by living the life they desire and really owning that, no matter what it looks like and really, no matter the cost.”
Amstutz and Trapnell (who are also a couple) worked closely on the clip—the two directed, shot, and edited the video together. “The whole thing was honestly just the two of us carting gear, building altars, and generally scaring other beach-dwellers,” Amstutz says, with echoes of Bergman, via Summer with Monika and Persona, and Godard. “We appreciate the way they experiment with the form within a loose narrative. If any of that is seeping through, we’ll take it as a compliment,” Amstutz says.
YOUTH REVISITED IS OUT JUNE 4. FOR MORE ON HERS, PLEASE VISIT THE BAND’S WEBSITE.