Juanita Stein Shares Video For 'Reckoning'
Taken from her brilliant new album, Snapshot (out now via Nude Records).
By: Sarah Jae Leiber Dec. 10, 2020
Juanita Stein has released the video for her new single, 'Reckoning,' taken from her brilliant new album, Snapshot (out now via Nude Records). The dreamy video, which follows Stein as she cycles through the nighttime streets of Southern France, was self-filmed in the summer and provides the perfect accompaniment to the song which, with the rest of the album, was written and recorded in the months following her father's passing.
Says Stein, "Reckoning is a song about the power of memory and grief. How the two go hand in hand. Certain images, smells and words can unlock the deepest or feelings. "The silence, the empty halls, the cold machines" is me recalling the antiseptic bubble we were in whilst visiting the hospital every day and the chorus is me releasing all of that. It's an immensely cathartic tidal wave of angst and melody. The video was shot on a couple iPhones in a small town in France called L'Isle-su-la-Sorgue during the warmer months. Myself, a bicycle and a heart full of sorrow."
The strains of the song are, as Rolling Stone Australia put it, "as if she's conjured words from a higher power and placed them on a blanket of broken glass and sweet apple pie. She cuts and nourishes all at once."
Unlike her first two solo albums, 'America' (2017) and 'Until The Lights Fade' (2018), which were made in just a few weeks in the United States, 'Snapshot' was recorded over the course of eight months at Agricultural Audio, not far from Juanita's home. She talks about the process: "This allowed me the time and distance I so craved. Ben was deeply concerned with allowing the songs to breathe and to take the right shape. We laid down all the defining guitar parts and vocals which were then beds for the band to come in and lay their parts on."
As the record began to take shape, Juanita "called on my brother, Joel Stein, (guitarist in Howling Bells) to play lead guitar, I knew only he could harness the exact frenzied energy needed for the songs. Both he and I were going through something pretty momentous and I wanted to shift that energy into the music. Evan Jenkins on drums alternated between freeform and thunderous on some tracks, light and barely-there on others. Jimi Wheelwright on bass held it all together beautifully."
The result is a record that feels crafted from a life lived as much as it was clearly excavated from loss. It's a record that strives to capture more than a passing moment and succeeds in laying its hands on something bigger than most of us will ever fully understand.
Stein recently recorded a session for WNYC's prestigious program Soundcheck and also announces fresh tour dates for 2021, running from May and concluding with a hometown show in Brighton on June 2. This tour will be Juanita's first chance to fully play the new album live, although fans were treated to a preview when she and her band played a special show streamed from Brighton's Electric last month, raising funds for the #WEMAKEEVENTS campaign in the process.
Watch the video for "Reckoning" here:
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