It’s suddenly November, which means we’ll all soon be busy crafting our Year in ReView coverage and compiling our favorite tracks of this lightning-fast 2021. No spoiler alerts here, but chances are we’ll see Sinead O’Brien’s scorching April single “Kid Stuff” included in, or at the top of, our SOTY lists. And we likely wont be alone. Until that crowning day arrives, we’re treated to another icy twirl from the Irish post-punk poet’s book of jaguar cool, via a new single and video for “Girlkind.”
This new one, out yesterday (November 2) via Chess Club Records, will be featured on O’Brien’s forthcoming, yet-to-be-announced debut album. “Girlkind” was produced by Dan Carey, and lands this week with a striking video directed by O’Brien’s frequent collaborator, Saskia Dixie.
“I wanted to create something that responded directly to the form and patterning of Sinead’s track,” says Dixie. “We have been fascinated with the shape of performative and neutral states of being for a long time and the film for ‘Girlkind,’ I think, gets to the core of this idea. The passing of time is a reliable certainty that drives on regardless of what contrasting state you are currently embodying, so this became the base thread for the piece. Simple domestic activities swell into loops that feel absurd and almost choreographic in parts of the work. Whilst action and consequence are mapped out visually, time becomes fragmented, as the action takes place in the neutral arena, and the result, a mark or stain, comes through into the performative sphere.”
O’Brien, true to form, had this to say about the single:
“I am out in the elements.
At the mercy of others.
Pulled in all directions.
I wait endless.
The phenomenon of the moving statues in Ireland during the 1980s becomes a motif.
‘When the virgin rocks the statues come to stop’.
These verses are glimpses into experience. Girlkind and Humanhood.
Persevering eternity.
Balancing, evaluating.
Going back and forth.
Keep forging a way through.”
Allow it to absorb you below.