After taking a bit of a break, I’m pleased to return with the latest from Jack Grace titled Redemption.
Led by pulsating percussion, there’s a melancholy that unfurls from the pop interior of this journey-like experience. Much of it is minimal but Grace has a way of packing so much emotion in so little.
Speaking on creating Redemption, Grace said:
“I built the tune over a synth loop that sounded to me like highway noise. The story fell in and around that. I wrote the song out of hope for a connection through the search for redemption. I hope that out of the chaos and deconstructing we get a shot at redemption and begin some kind of a revival, soon.”
With the single is a Guillem Cruells directed video with Paris-based production agency Septembre00 which was shot in multiple locations in the south of France. Here, Grace takes a drive in the middle of a cold dead winter. On the video, Cruells offered:
“I always loved to drive a car. I think that is a moment where your body is occupied driving and your mind travels through different thoughts or memories. When Septembre 00 and Jack proposed me to work on a project around the concept of Redemption and the transition from darkness to light. I thought that it would be really interesting to use a car as a tool to move this character on a timeline, from darkness to the light and also through his feelings and sensations.”
Grace also offered some insight into the visuals, adding:
“We shot the clip for Redemption in Basque Country, France late in January. I came to the area trying to get some relief and space to finish some music after being locked down in my tiny apartment in Paris and locked out of Australia for all of last year. While I was there I was lucky enough to meet a pair of creative directors (September00) from Biarrtiz, they pulled in Guillem Cruells (Director) and Marti Herrera (DOP) from Barcelona and we managed to work out a plan to shoot to film out in the middle of a harsh and deep winter in some of my favorite landscape. The whole piece was shot in a 50km radius across two days. It draws on the crux of the song – a journey from darkness to light.”
Redemption is off of Grace’s just-announced debut album, ‘Turn To Something You Know’, which was created with deep-rooted inspiration combining with a new and refreshed context. Classic songwriting rooted in the everyday that draws on life through the lens of growing up in small towns and outer suburbs, and Grace’s own experience of moving from the vast rural landscapes of Australia to the cultural metropolis of Paris, losing and ultimately rediscovering a sense of self. “Around the end of my first year in France I had a moment where I realized I had inadvertently ripped the rug out from under my identity,” he recalls. “I went about trying to rebuild it and I made this record while I did that.”
Watch Redemption right here.