“What you follow, fear or love?”
Hard times beckon hard questions. And like many of us, Black Grapefruit is asking away.
Over the summer, as protestors hit the streets despite the viral and institutional threats to their bodies, the New York-based group released the meditative one-off, “Inside.” Recorded in their adopted upstate outpost, the track mines a bewildering era in human history from a perch, looking out on a planet reeling from converging strains of chaos, pain, loss, and grief.
Speaking with NPR earlier this year, singer Randa Leigh admits, “We’ve cried more this summer than any before it.” She goes on to add with gleaming hope, “But we also just finished putting new plants into wet soil. We could have stayed inside, ya know? But we got out in the mud and did our best to put something new in the ground.” And if you know anything about what lays north of NYC, the concrete dissipates and gives way to an uncanny fertility the moment you cross the Bronx/Riverdale line. For anyone’s that’s strapped up for the sojourn, daring to defy the city’s magnetic charge, the calm of Upstate’s serene hills, aggressive silence, and uncompromising views of the winding Hudson, are a instant shot of needed aesthetic therapy for those shaking off the grit and bustle.
And that’s just where we find Black Grapefruit in the new video for “Inside,” healing in the hillside, contemplating those grand inquiries, and basking in a fleeting blip of simplicity. “The process was extremely cathartic. No treatment, crew, or gear. Just four friends and some good energy,” the group says of the warped and lush iPhone-shot treatment via email.
Watch the video for Black Grapefruit’s “Inside” below and hold tight for their next dispatch.