Kelsey Lu Dreams in Reverse
Kelsey Lu is a classically trained cellist making a solo, chamber pop sound, looping her instrument ala Zoe Keating and Jami Sieber and singing along with it like Caroline Lavelle and Jorane. She was raised in Charlotte, NC as a Jehovah’s Witness which makes me feel bad now for all the Jehovah’s I’ve shooed away from my door. She escaped that however, to find a Bohemian life in New York playing in alt-rock bands like Chairlift and developing her own music. I found her new video for “Dreams” to be one of the most seductive experiences I’ve watched in a while. A beautiful, lithe black woman, the video, shot in black & white, finds her getting undressed in reverse or forward, (hard to tell since it’s run backwards) and running through a Joshua Tree landscape. She’s about to release her first solo EP, Church, of which “Dreams” is the lead-off song. The vocal doesn’t even start till four minutes into a soundscape of ethereal looping cello arcs, but when it does, the world opens up in her powerful field holler of a voice on a song of ill-fated love.But one question… what is the Playboy Bunny doing on the haunches of the horse she rides?