Clowns have been taking up a lot of room in the pop culture zeitgeist over the past year. There was the whole deal with creepy clowns showing up at random towards the end of 2016, and more recently we have Pennywise in the new adaptation of IT and whatever is happening in trailers for the latest season of American Horror Story. The thing that connects all of these is that they’re all terrifying. Midnight Sister have just released a new song called “Clown” and a video to go with it, but thankfully this piece of clown media is much lighter (via Lenny Letter).
The song is the most tender of the releases we’ve heard so far this year from the duo of Juliana Giraffe and Ari Balouzian. For almost all of the song’s runtime the only thing underscoring Giraffe’s voice is a softly plunking piano. It’s only towards the end that we get some of the orchestral flourish that appear in more of Midnight Sister’s work.
The video stars Giraffe alongside Arthur Roberts as a lonely inhabitant of a roadside hotel. Roberts goes outside to dance alone each night. Over the course of the song Giraffe joins in to dance with Roberts, and the look of quiet, shocked happiness on Roberts’ face at having a partner to dance with will warm your heart.
“Clown” is from Midnight Sister’s debut album Saturn Over Sunset, which is now quickly approaching. The album is set for release next Friday, September 8, through Jagjaguwar.
