[Elena Tonra](https://www.instagram.com/ohdaughter/?hl=en) of the band Daughter has released the vinyl and CD version of her eponymously-titled solo debut “Ex:Re” (pronounced ex ray). Already on heavy rotation at the Flaunt offices, the album features 10 tracks filled with cathartic tunes and mimic seemingly unwritten letters of heartbreak.
Ex:Re worked closely with directors Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard to create the music video for the fifth track off the album “The Dazzler,” a hotel imagined in Ex:Re’s lyrics. The video features actress Maxine Peake unfolding the woeful lyrics that Ex:Re penned from a personal experience.
Tonra said, “What I loved about their idea for the video was to take the original song - which is a detailed account of a night I had spent in a New York hotel room - and transform that hotel from a physical place into a concept,” elaborating on the directors’ creative decisions. “The hotel in the video is symbolizing the endless loop of being stuck somewhere, like being stuck in limbo, because you cannot get over your last love.”
The majority of the video is shot in red and blue luminescent lighting, complementing the darker themes of desolation and self-pity behind Peake’s utterly heartbreaking performance.
The two directors, who previously worked on videos with Daughter for the record “Not to Disappear,” explain, “Elena told us The Dazzler was a real place, but we wanted to transform it into a hotel of the mind.” Iain and Jane continue, “That lost, sedated limbo you get stuck in when you can’t get over your last relationship. With a colour palette borrowed from Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’, our hotel room becomes a kaleidoscopic vision of a world stuck in an endless loop. Swimming in regret and drowning in thick alcohol.”
Originally released digitally on Nov. 30, the physically released is sure to rest nice in your library. Playing off the moniker, Tonra’s lyrics peel back and digest each layer of heartbreak - taking a look from within, mimicking the function of an x-ray. Prepare for an emotional experience.
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