Miriam Clancy Shares New Single 'Head Like A Hole'

NYC-based, New Zealand-bred rocker Miriam Clancy has released a second single from her upcoming album Black Heart today, entitled "Head Like A Hole," examining our digital codependency. Black Heart is due to arrive on January 20. Clancy will perform tomorrow night in New York at Pianos, 9pm.

"Head Like A Hole" focuses on our co-dependency with the internet, its knobby fingers needling into all aspects of our lives: the good news, bad news, validation, cancelling, discrimination and faux-friending.

Miriam says, "How can we hate this? The great library in the sky! But it's so good though! We are entranced yet anxious targets zooming around the internet and it's beautiful and connected, addictive and thrilling! I love it, can't look away. At the same time, it's a great vacuum of space that our cyber-dimensional lives are making in our minds, constantly claiming more real estate till we have no room left to recalibrate and regulate - only react."

Filmed by Winger Brothers, and edited by Miriam Clancy, the video for "Head Like A Hole" drew on inspiration from old Split Enz videos, Miriam's favourite - Donnie Darko, and David Lynch's Lady In The Radiator, with a little Logan's Run thrown in for good measure.

It's a personal video, the footage real, the themes universal - the internet is taking over, to the extent where Miriam feels at one with the machine. The lightning was filmed from Miriam's tiny balcony, downtown. The skating scenes are a metaphor for the great unplug, filmed on the back streets of Kutztown, Pennsylvania where roads are wild with cracks and old tarseal, and where Keith Haring came from.

"We would have looked bonkers, but it was one of my fave ever video shoots - Skateboarding isn't work, it's alive and awesome. Ride or die! Unless I break my guitar hand, then I'm burning that thing."

Miriam grew up on sci-fi and horror shows. The song and video together fall somewhere in the middle, but she loved the set design and "futurist" couture of Logan's Run with its dark narrative, a death cult in which no-one lives past their third decade. Miriam wears Karen Walker and Logan's Run chic in the video for "Head Like A Hole".

Hailed as "a voice to move mountains" & "New Zealand music's best kept secret" by her homeland's leading music critics, Clancy amassed rave reviews for her debut and sophomore albums and a stack of stage cred having headlined national tours and supported Wilco, Mark Lanegan and Ron Sexsmith before shifting camp from Aotearoa to New York City.

From there Miriam played the hallowed stages of her favorite 70's songwriters, while gathering further acclaim with her Chris Coady produced album Astronomy. Then a left-field move to the Lehigh Valley in search of space brought forth her 2021 single - "Pennsylvania," featuring alt-country rock band Frog Holler - which invites you to get lost and found again in this searing love-letter to Pennsylvania.

From the NYC immersion to the depth of rural PA, Miriam has now found herself with a solid lineup of talented musicians which has resulted in her new record Black Heart - a melodic Gen X explosion of heart, rage and release reminiscent of the great female artists at the fore of 90's alt music and the era's definitive sonic aesthetic.

The album captures the brilliance of Miriam and her telepathic band featuring Jeremy McDonald, Will Graefe and Mike Riddleberger as they move through intricate clouds of Clannad-esque guitars and vocals, which turn to sparse folk-rock deep cuts twisting into fleeting moments of Roxy Music influenced art-pop, and out again via a grand piano apocalypse. And then there's Miriam's angelic voice pulling it all together and tearing it apart with pivotal moments drawn from her indie-folk beginnings.

Watch the new music video here:

Photo Credit: Winger Brothers