Tune-Yards have released the video for their track, “Honesty,” from their new record, I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life, released January 19. The new video features Garbus as a vintage housewife finding solace in the universe of processed and unnaturally bright foods.
According to the label, Tune-Yards collaborated with Creative Growth, a non-profit that serves artists with disabilities by providing a professional environment, to develop the concept for the video. Garbus recently spoke about the video, written and directed by Susan Janow: “Susan’s concept for the video played artfully against the lyrics of the song – I loved her idea of a bored, sheltered housewife having an ecstatic psychedelic experience involving weird jello food and lots of pizza. The topics of this album are heavy and light at the same time, and I’m so glad to have a video that brings out its joyful Dada side.”
The Tune-yards, started by Merrill Garbus in 2006, are known for blending a slew of genres to create the ultimate in art kid world music. The group has released four albums including Bird-Brains (2009), Whokill (2011), Nikki Nack (2014) and most recently the timely record, I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life (2018). For the recent album, Garbus tackled issues concerning white privilege and cultural appropriation. “For me, it reached a crisis point,” Garbus told NPR by phone. “I couldn’t not speak about whiteness in my work.”
To process, Garbus designed an anti-racist curriculum including a six-month anti-racist workshop at the East Bay Meditation Center. Garbus describes her process for writing Honesty saying, “In the workshop that I did we were asked to look at videotapes of police killings. We were read narratives of lynchings, describing what actually took place, in detail. And then we were asked to sit in meditation, and be honest with ourselves.” She goes on to say, “that was where I had to ask myself the question: do you really want to know? A lot of the time, I didn’t want to know. We deny our own racism, because it feels so ugly.”
Check out the official video for “Honesty” along with the Making of ‘Honesty’
Photo Credit: Raymond Flotat
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