To make art is to make sacrifices, and for Los Angeles troopers Carly And The Universe, it means piling thick goop on your chest until your dress straps bust, all for the sake of a killer music video. And singer Carly Liza takes it like a damn champ.
Today the group dropped the music video for “Black & Blue,” their latest release from forthcoming album A Greater Thing, and the video spares us few details on their creative process.
Drenched head to torso in red slime, and later in a galaxy-like bath of murky black water, Liza visually and vocally unravels the heaviness of the tune in an experimental jazz-blues fusion (and the thought of the off-camera dress casualty just hits home how cumbersome that sludge really was).
“We just wanted to paint a picture to our audience that this release is more of build-up type of song, as opposed to some of the more heavy-hitting tunes we have on the album,” Liza says. “There isn’t much of a direct story with the song lyrically, but it’s the first song we finished writing for the album.”
The shift in genres presents a slight detour for the band’s usual pop repertoire, but the track’s noir undertones are deliberate; Carly And The Universe carved out the song as more of an eerie outlier in their catalogue.
“‘Black & Blue’ definitely isn’t much like the rest of the album, but it is an eerie style that we do like to write in and embody somewhere on each album that we do,” Liza adds. “The album is pretty varied in terms of styles, with this one sort of standing on its own.”
Check out Carly And The Universe in all their goopy glory below.