New Video: Child Actress Shares Woozy and Achingly Bittersweet “Just Fine Never Better”

Canadian singer/songwriter and musician Rena Kozak is the creative mastermind the solo recording project Child Actress. Initially starting her career in Calgary, Kozak relocated to Montréal in 2017, where she firmly solidified herself as a must-see performer and songwriter, as well as a highly sought-after producer and mixing engineer.

On the heels of last year’s Ancestor Worship, the Montréal-based artist’s just released EP, Just Fine Never Better is the last of a batch of songs she wrote after the 2012 death of her boyfriend, Women‘s and The Dodos‘ Chris Reimer. The EP’s first two songs were written very early on, as she was grieving Reimer’s death. But the last two were written in the last couple of years. For the Canadian artist, it was important for her to finish and release these remaining songs, so she can cleanse of herself of that phrase, and see what might happen next creatively. The EP’s last two songs were included on the EP to symbolize forward motion and growth.

Just Fine Never Better‘s latest track, EP title track “Just Fine Never Better” is an atmospheric Disintegration-era The Cure and Heaven or Las Vegas-era Cocteau Twins-like tune featuring Kozak’s achingly tender vocal ethereally floating over glistening synths and reverb-soaked shoegazer guitar textures. Much like the material its seemingly draws inspiration from and the deeply personal experience that informs it, “Just Fine Never Better” expresses the familiar bitter heartache that accompanies the “what-ifs” and the “if-I-had-only-knowns” of our lives — with the recognition that there are countless times we long for people, things and places we can’t ever get back.

Originally written by Reimer, “Just Fine Never Better” was a song that the couple really liked. And after Reimer’s death, his parents gave Kozak permission to use it with Child Actress.

“I struggled to understand what Chris was saying in the lyrics on the cell phone recording of us jamming together — beyond the phase ‘we could have a regular time tonight,’ I couldn’t make out much else,” the Montréal-based artist says. “I had never asked him what he was singing, I was always delicate with Chris and his creative output. He was shy about his songwriting and was just starting to develop lyrics and I didn’t want to push or influence him by prying. I figured he would make the words clear when he was sure of himself.

“I took the one phrase I could hear to be an implication of his desire to slow down on drinking and partying – a concept we had been talking about a lot. His lifestyle on tour was full of alcohol, and we were having a lot of conversations about how when we moved in together, we would slow down on the drinking; we would have more ‘regular nights,'” she recalls. “I built a little on the idea that he was musing on this with the song – what would it be like to fall asleep sober and wake up feeling fine… and then, for me, I inserted my own self into the theme of what would it be like to wake up with him still alive that day instead of waking up to find he had passed while I slept. In the end, that’s what I made the song about – what if we just went to bed that night and woke up to another day instead?”

The video by Forbidden Candy Productions manages to capture the 80s vibe of its accompanying video with an uncanny, period specific precision.