Watch

Read

Listen

Go

Play

Shop

Community

Play (Lists)

Murder and Remorse in “Hallelujah” Music Video by Yify Zhang

By Charlie Maybee

Electro indie pop musician, Yify Zhang, is back with a lush new music video for “Hallelujah”. Pulling on the simultaneously emotive and spiritual strings of the song’s namesake, it takes on a haunting feel like an invisible entity keeps running a finger down your spine.

The video features a modern dancer performing gesturally driven movement in front of projected images of misty mountains, flocks of flying birds, deep forests, and more. The primary use of the hands makes the choreography feel sensual in nature to match the echoing, ethereal vocals of Zhang who appears only a few times with a ghostly piano, but there is something pained about the movement that seeps through each gesture.

Lyrically, she digs deep into the darkness, “I killed him off in the haze / I didn’t blink until it was over / Just before I heard the church bells ring”. Murder is something that one might not expect this musical confessional box, but as she sings out “He bled all over my face / And when I cleaned it off in the bathroom / Went to Sunday service singing… / Hallelujah” the titular final word repeats throughout the chorus with a deeply remorseful tone.

As the video progresses, warmer lights start to break through the mist giving us a glimpse of sunshine in an otherwise dim, gray landscape, but it is not permanent. The darkness persists, and perhaps that is something Zhang will have to live with. There is a lesson to be gleaned here about the ephemeral, fluid nature of morality and how it changes to meet certain moments. But like everything else in the music video, it shifts and fades quickly leaving us with nothing but a feeling of unease as the dancer continues to wrestle with Shakespearean spot of blood upon her hands.

“Hallelujah” is available on major streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. The accompanying music video is also available on YouTube. Find this and more great music on the Alchemical Records Multigenre Mixture playlist on Spotify and YouTube.

Charlie Maybee

Charlie Maybee is a dancer, musician, educator, and writer based in Charleston, South Carolina who currently teaches with the Dance Program at the College of Charleston. His primary work as an artist is with his performing collective, Polymath Performance Project, through which he makes interdisciplinary performance art that centers tap dance as the primary medium of expression and research. He also currently plays rhythm guitar for the Charleston-based punk band, Anergy, and releases music as a solo artist under the name Nox Eterna.

Join the Alchemical Records Street Team to promote these and other artists, live music, and music community organizations & events while receiving cool perks from artists throughout the region.

More to explore

Foghat Sonic Mojo 2024 Tour. Fillmore Silver Spring, MD March 9
DMV

Foghat’s Roger Earl Refuses to Slow His Ride

By this point in his life, Foghat founding drummer Roger Earl has visited quite a few doctors. But what may be surprising is that the percussionist, 77, is quick to point out that many of the medical professionals who have worked on him also enjoy rocking out.

“Nearly all the doctors and surgeons I know, they all play something: trumpet, sax, violin, guitar,” Earl said recently. “There’s not too many drummers that are surgeons, there’s probably a good reason for that!”

Earl half-jokingly invites his surgeon-rockers to join him and the other members of Foghat onstage at the Fillmore in Silver Spring March 9, where they will be headlining the Rock and Roll for Children Foundation benefit for the Children’s Inn at NIH. Earl, the only original member of Foghat still in the band, will be banging the skins behind guitarist Bryan Bassett and other members Scott Holt and Rodney O’Quinn. “Slow Ride,” the band’s 1975 megahit, is all but assured to be on the setlist, along with tunes from Foghat’s most recent record, “Sonic Mojo.”

Read More »

Leave a Reply