Every now and then we gaze our tired eyes upon a music video, and feel an urge to climb up inside the visual and live there forever and ever. That’s the allure and pull from Josienne Clarke’s new video for “Workhorse,” a pastel-lit roller skating odyssey that’s not only lovely to look at, but also serves as a portal into Clarke’s own sense of self through melancholic pop.
“Workhorse,” with its ease of cool defiance, will be featured on the Scottish singer, songwriter, and producer’s forthcoming EP I Promised You Light, due out February 4 via her own label Corduroy Punk. It’s the follow-up to last year’s A Small Unknowable Thing album.
These lyrics from “Workhorse” sum the track’s mood up nicely, asserting control over her own well being: “I don’t have to earn / I can be / I’m not your workhorse / Or your busy bee / And I won’t be your cash cow / Now I will be the one / If I’m making money / Then I want some.”
Take that to the roller-disco bank.
“This is the most joyous one on [the new EP], to me,” says Clarke, noting her newfound sense of experimentation with synths and electronic music patterns. She adds: “I don’t intend to renounce my acoustic roots at all, but I feel like the old set-up in the industry was quite keen to tell me what type of music I could and couldn’t make… I feel like ‘Workhorse’ is like: ‘What if I could do whatever I wanted? What would that sound like? That sound is this track.”
Speaking of the wonderful video, directed by Alec Bowman_Clarke, she asserts: “It’s just me in a massive room with loads of disco lights with silent disco headphones on just messing about to my own positivity anthem.”
Find the location on Zillow, and let’s put in an offer.