Coinciding with the release of AJ Lambert’s new album Dirt Soda, the artist unveils a wild new video for the record's key track, My Blood. In the video, AJ portrays two characters: one who is free in her body and dancing, and the other who is a static, gloomy figure who never leaves her chair.
AJ notes: “This song is about having parts of yourself - whether within you or without you - that can never be connected and reconciled no matter how much you want that. The video came to me purely about movement at first - the song just screams out for dance to me - and then I realized there was an opportunity to merge that confident mover with a completely static and wretched character to show the contrast between the two aspects of life that can’t be joined, and to show how tragic that is.”
Director Eleanor Petry adds: ”In February AJ came to me with the idea for this video- I was thrilled. Dancing has been a huge part of my life since I was a young child. It was a dream come true to make this dance video. Through Kate Wallich and Dance Church, I met Cody Brunelle-Potter who brought in the dancers, working with them and AJ to create the movement for the video. I love the Lynchian, Star Wars inspired dancescape we made.”
Lambert's new album features an impressive lineup of musicians, including AJ on vocals, Taurus pedal, piano and guitar, and also Jeff Friedl (Devo, A Perfect Circle), Parker Kindred (Joan As Policewoman) and Rhys Hastings (Yves Tumor) on drums, Dave Harrington (Darkside) on guitar, Kenny Gilmore (Julia Holter) on synths.
On the album's entirety, AJ shares: “This record was made over 2 one-week sessions in 2021, using mostly the same musicians. We had Parker Kindred join Rhys Hastings as double drummers on the first session and then Jeff Friedl joined us on the second session. This time I only did 3 covers (‘Strings of Nashville’ - Pavement, ‘Broken Hearted Wine’- Codeine and ‘Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye' - The Casinos) and wrote the rest myself. Writing with Mike Wallace and Greg Ahee for the Bloodslide EP was very inspiring in that regard; I'd forgotten how much I loved writing songs.
“For almost all the songwriting, I played a chord progression one time in the demo phase and decided that was the song, no second tries. Then I put melody over that and again didn’t let myself redo what I put down on the first try. It was actually a really freeing way to write, since I had no choice but to fit lyrics into what was there and couldn’t be changed.
“I worked once again with Sonny Diperri (Bloodslide) which is always a treat for me since he really lets me experiment and doesn’t shoot any idea down, no matter how strange or unlikely to work it might seem.”