Screen lights up on gothic folk-meets-pop duo Charm Of Finches. The first time for all of us to see the filmcip for the new song, Gravity.
We're watching them - sisters Mabel and Ivy Windred-Wornes - through a distorted lens. In bush land. On a day when the grey clouds and a weak sun tussle for dominance, to the soundtrack of strings and strings – guitar, cello, banjo, violin, harp.
“Say you want to see me on my birthday/And I’m teary again.”
It’s as if we’ve fallen through the looking glass to a gauzy tea party. Maybe we’ve taken some acid drops instead of tea from the Mad Hatter. The cheeks are spotted with red, the old wine glasses are redder still, and on the picnic blanket is a fruit-laden pavlova, surrounded by marshmallows.
“Oh it sounds like fun, oh it sounds like fun”.
But it’s more, the distant looks in the eyes tell us. There’s a strain of sadness that may be deeper still. We all want and we want to keep, they say, but wishing it, saying it, even believing it, won’t make it happen. Things are lost, chances are missed, people are gone.
“Pity it came undone because it sounds like fun.”
Continuing the measured build up to a new album of tempered oddness and beauty, Gravity, the latest song from Charm Of Finches – you may have heard it already in this playlist, Sweet And Sour Sound – feels captured between slumber and waking, layers accumulating in thoughts, sound and harmonies as they, as we, transition.
The filmclip, directed by the pair, is similarly caught, between flimsy threads of wistful cloth and the richness of indulgence temptingly close. Close, and then consumed. Desired, then gone. As everything inevitably is.
“How didn’t we see, we couldn’t withstand gravity.”
NOW, WATCH GRAVITY, BY CHARM OF FINCHES. (A world exclusive you could say!)