New Video: Laura Carbone Shares Bittersweet “Silver Rain”

Berlin-based singer/songwriter, guitarist, photographer and JOVM mainstay Laura Carbone‘s third album The Cycle was released earlier this year. The album, which debuted on North American college radio at #19 on the NACC Top Adds Chart, is a concept album that explores the emotional turmoil, triumphs and transformative experiences that the album’s protagonist experiences through the course of the passing seasons of a year. 

Each song of the represents an experience or inspiration associated with that particular season and the story of the album’s protagonist. 

In the lead-up to the album’s release, I wrote about two previously released singles:

• “Horses,” a slow-burning song built around lush and shimmering acoustic guitar, Carbone’s expressive and yearning delivery, paired with a supple bass line and dramatic drumming. Sonically bringing PJ Harvey’s “You Said Something” to mind, the song is set in the fullness of summer. The song’s protagonist is experiencing the heat, humidity and passion of the season — when fields become gold and heatwaves and wildfires turn them into ash. But there’s a reminder that Mother Earth will restore and reclaim burnt ground in time. 
• “The Good,” a breathtakingly gorgeous song featuring shimmering and reverb soaked guitar, a supple and sinuous bass line, gently padded drumming and bursts of soaring organ serving as a lush bed for Carbone’s expressive vocal. At its core, the song is rooted in the lived-in personal experience and hard-fought, harder-won wisdom of someone who has lived a full, messy and complicated life. And a result the song is profoundly empathetic and understanding examination of human behavior that seems to say “I’ve been there, too.” Carbone explains that the track looks at our puzzling capacity for denial — not just of the truth, but of the embrace and love we owe ourselves. 

Building upon The Cycle‘s chart-burning momentum, the German JOVM mainstay shared an additional single from the album, “Silver Rain,” a bittersweet ballad anchored around a propulsive rhythm section, shimmering reverb-soaked guitars, a cathartic hook serving as a lush bed for Carbone’s expressive, soulful vocal. While seemingly channelling Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea-era PJ Harvey, “Silver Rain,” as Carbone explains explores the relief a break-up can bring and the room in our hearts that such a bittersweet letting go creates.

Directed by Helen Sobiralski, the accompanying video for “Silver Rain” is based on a roughly two-minute excerpt of the song and features an edit of scenes Sobiralski had previously shot of Carbone projected on fabrics that were moved by wind and reflected on water. As Sobiralski explains her “intention behind the images was to intensify the song in some ways, to give it a heavier feel, to give a twist and counteract its lightness and sweetness.”

“In my eyes,” continues Sobiralski, “the story, told in the moving images, gives the words of the song a different meaning–here the protagonist is free, relieved and constantly flowing.”