Frankie Rose Deserves a Quiet Night

 

This week has certainly been awash in music video output from the original line-up of lo-fi Brooklyn crooners Vivian Girls. First up was the surreal double feature for two new tracks by Katy Goodman’s solo project, La Sera; and now former Vivian drummer Frankie Rose is debuting “Night Swim,” the second video from her latest LP, Interstellar.

Directed by Laurel Parmet, “Night Swim” chronicles just that. Pulsing percussion matches actress Tess Harrison’s slapping steps on the dock, and lilting vocals accompany her dive. She descends into a swirling maelstrom of translucent murkiness, writhing limbs, and psychedelic displays of Technicolor bioluminescence.

With the repeated vocals, “I know you said let me go, oh, oh/Only up, only up,” Harrison is pulled even further into the abyss, seemingly entranced by her partners there, obscured human figures with otherworldly glowing smiles and skin tinged a hypothermic blue. Whether they be predatory, or welcoming, it is unclear, but they are reluctant to let Rose make her ascent to the surface.

And after breaking through for one last breath, Harrison is pulled under once again, forever lost in a subaquatic limbo.