Having recently announced her ninth album, The Path of the Clouds, Marissa Nadler has revealed a new single and video off the anticipated album. If I Could Breathe Underwater is a richly instrumented, ethereal cut which features harp from Nadler's longtime friend Mary Lattimore, and comes with a beautiful visual directed and edited by Jenni Hensler with cinematography by Nick Fancher.
“When I wrote If I Could Breathe Underwater, I was contemplating the possibilities of possessing various superhuman powers: teleportation, shapeshifting, energy projection, aquatic breathing, extrasensory perception, and time travel to name a few,” Nadler comments on the new track. “As a lyrical device, I married those powers with events in my life, wondering if and how they could change the past or predict the future. I loved working on the melody for this song and bringing the choruses to their climaxes. Mary’s layered, hallucinatory shimmers really echo the netherworld of the story.”
Director Jenni Hensler says of the accompanying video which was shot on 16mm film: “This song took on many meanings to me and I love that about it. How beauty and tragedy collide. Dreaming of having supernatural powers to change reality and have the ability to live and breathe underwater. It could also speak to the duality of existence. That we all have inner personas or shadow selves, and how we envision those different masks we wear. I chose to make something that touched on the idea of duality and the inner persona. To connect to the two worlds.”
The Path of the Clouds comes out October 29th, 2021 through Sacred Bones and Bella Union.
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ZR