Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist Alvidrez and founding member of L.A. band Girl Friday, has shared the video for her debut single “Red,” a somber, guitar-blistering dirge that is delivered gorgeously via director Al Kalyk’s surreal vision. Playing to the melancholic scenery of a family home, Alvidrez offers her droning cries through the filter of noisily sharp sonics adorned as she is in white-clown face-paint and a red suit. Less a horror stint than it actually is, “Red” traces all that is emotionally visceral in Alvidrez’s voice. Guitars grate like nails against the walls as her vocals split and fray in out of blown-out speakers, and out of the discord Alvidrez paints in red a portrait of herself completely unmasked and vulnerable.
“The song came about in a moment of personal crisis. I find the only way to deal with my own troubles is to make music and listen to the music of people going through similar motions,” she said of the inspiration behind the song. “Part of the magic of the musical experience is being in the dark, feeling alone, and hearing a song which reminds you we are all in this together, and we all share fears and doubts. When I wrote this song i was in one of the places I feel safest, but suddenly it had become the most inhospitable place on the planet. I felt like I had made one mistake after another. I felt like a fool that no one was laughing at. I wanted to make the video in the same place I felt these things, surrounded by artifacts of my life at the time. I made the video just like I made the music, I made it for me, to remind myself of something I thought was important and beautiful and hard. It was important to me that the video was directed by my partner Al Kalyk.”
Alvidrez’s eclectic sound and multi-instrumental minded music owes itself somewhat to the home she grew up in: raised by her father’s love of Motown and her mother’s affinity to the hymns that were sung in their church every Sunday. Her moniker is a nod to that past, taken from her mother’s name. Alvidrez’s debut is intended to be a deeply personal venture into mental health, family, and love.
Visit Alvidrez’s website to stay updated on future releases and tour announcements. Follow her band Girl Friday via Facebook and Instagram.
