The “Peppermint Olive” clip tells a haunting story of life and death.
After just a couple of minutes, it’s clear that Star Rover’s debut, I May Be Lost But I’m Laughing, is not just another dream-pop album. Released last month through 11A Records, it’s got an improvisational quality to it, with mesmerizing polyrhythms and unexpected chordal and timbral changes inspired by some of band’s chief influences, Aphex Twin and Tortoise. The Brooklyn duo, Will Graefe and Jeremy Gustin, weave these elements together with occasional unison and harmonized vocals, a combination which places this album in an interesting middle-ground between experimental post-rock and folk.
One of the songs on the record is the mesmerizingly eerie “Peppermint Olive,” featuring Mikey Freedom Hart (Ex Reyes, Blood Orange) on keys and Sarah K. Pedinotti (Lip Talk) on background vocals. The track is about the natural cycle of life and death. Its accompanying video, whose Photography was directed by Liam Lee and which we’re premiering today, offers an equally haunting, yet strangely charming, perspective on the matter. Star Rover told AdHoc over email that the video was shot “at an old schoolhouse and an abandoned quarry in the Berkshires,” and that “a whimsical new world emerged from these compelling environments––one that the ambiguous moth creature would navigate her way through.”
Indeed, the video depicts what appears to be a human-moth-hybrid (portrayed by Pedinotti) being born out of an ice cocoon. That’s right: an ice cocoon, one that was beautifully crafted by New York ice sculptor, Thomas Brown. The duo also gave us some insight into the narrative of the video; “Along the way [the moth] has to reckon with the sensual allure of various elements foreign to her; ice, light, wind, and more. SKP (Sarah K. Pedinotti of Lip Talk) wonderfully embodied this creature in all of its strange beauty!”