Deep Sea Diver Revisit Live Shows In Video For “Impossible Weight” Featuring Sharon Van Etten
The title track off their upcoming album, Deep Sea Diver have shared their new single, “Impossible Weight”. Featuring a guest verse from Sharon Van Etten, the grungy, rock track is accompanied by a video that’ll take you into the wilderness, through the city, and land you in a concert hall.
The video came from a desire to bring an element of live shows to a digital audience. “I thought, well..if we can’t play shows right now, I’m going to take my lightbox…and I’m going to bring it into a myriad of untraditional places,” says bandleader Jessica Dobson. The changes of scenery within the video keep their continuity thanks to Dobson and her guitar, standing on her lightbox, as viewers travel through the various locations, to end up inside The Neptune concert hall. Reminiscent of live shows that we aren’t able to experience at the moment, the final location also has ties to the collaboration between Dobson and Van Etten. “I chose The Neptune as the final shot because that is the venue in which I saw Sharon… play at the night before we recorded the song,” Dobson adds, making the final frames of the video especially fitting for the single.
As the album itself was coming together, Dobson was grappling with identity issues and expectations, especially the ones she placed on herself. Recently meeting her birth mother and finding a new freedom within her and her music, you can undoubtedly hear traces of these shifts within “Impossible Weight”. The chorus especially speaks to the change in her mentality, as she sings: “But that was then / and this is now / I tried so hard not to let you all down / it’s an impossible weight / so I’ll just let you down now.”
Dobson says she ultimately hopes that the song – and the record – gives people room to feel whatever they need to feel, and realize they don’t need to work through everything on their own. “The point is that the impossible weight isn’t yours to carry alone – that’s why it’s impossible.”
Watch the video for “Impossible Weight” below and her their previous single “Lights Out” here.
