jess joy – “dreams”
Americana Highways is pleased to present this video premiere of jess joy’s song “dreams” from her forthcoming album Won’t Be Kicked Out the Garden. The album was produced and mixed by Greg Saunier of Deerhoof, the album was made primarily with Laura Fisher and Alex Brownstein, who traveled to Tucson to record with Saunier, as well as with artists Sarah McTaggart (vocals, “the earth cries through me”), Jermaine Butler (drums, “book of longing”), Byron Asher (saxophone, “easy”), Anuraag Pendyal (piano, “welcome home”), Kenny Zhao (vocals, “the fool”), and Saunier (drums, slide guitar, “owed to spring”, “the fool”).
This video was directed by jess joy. jess has a voice that crackles with vulnerability as it’s simultaneously rich, layered, commanding, and wholly unique. jess often works with the concepts of identity within her creations, and this video is piercing in what it conveys – with the feminine masked with a stocking over her face, and the masculine as a deadpan suit. Just like her vocals themselves, the song and the video, as Bob Dylan might say, contain multitudes. Against a backdrop of acoustic guitar strings, keyboards, synthesizers that play like raindrops, jess crafts something truly innovative.
‘dreams’ poses the question, do we truly possess, or are we possessed? We put on professional roles and sleep through portions of our lives to survive—but I believe that our subconscious selves, where our repressed desires live, are very much awake, writhing, and fighting to be expressed.
The dancer/choreographer of the music video, Jessica Donley, is a movement artist and somatic experience practitioner. We met in an expressive arts therapy class and worked on the video concept together. Donley, Olivia Luz Perillo (the photographer), and I are all from and live in Louisiana. We decided to film in the swamp at dawn, because we consider it a most beautiful land/time on Earth—a dark, lush, mysterious, sticky dreamland emerging into daylight/awareness.- jess joy
You can find the music here: https://jessjoy.lnk.to/garden
