Abby Sage has shared another preview of her forthcoming debut album The Rot with the release of its latest single “Obstruction,” an eerie exploration of the tormenting thoughts that can relentlessly plague your mind. Like the previously released “Milk” and “Hunger” her newest song delves viscerally into a reflective confrontation. When the record arrives March 1st via Nettwerk it will clearly deliver on the Los Angeles artist’s desire to be less “observational” than her first two EPs and more intentional in “digesting” herself.
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At the center of her new single “Obstruction” is an unnerving, at times downright harrowing, delve into Sage’s personification of a particularly pesky memory. The song’s lyrics — gushing with images of intrusive thoughts being surgically removed or hiding in the corners of your room — as well as its otherworldly melody could be seamlessly layered over a horror film.
“Dust is not so different from you,” she whispers sleepily. “Uninvited, hiding in my living room / Filling up my lungs.” Her languorous words languorous slipping hazily between the discordant but transfixing tangle of acoustic strums, shrieking strings, and doleful hand claps that echo stridently around her. Produced by MyRiot the track reveals just how effortlessly Sage has evolved since the verdant and buoyant sounds of The Florist — now she’s immersed in far more haunting and personally illuminating waters.
Sage has also continued her tradition of putting out equally captivating — and in this case disconcerting — music videos that visualize the emotions and scenarios her music journeys through. For “Obstruction” she envisioned herself having a meal with a physical manifestation of that nagging thought. In the video it takes the form of a mannequin that joins her for dinner in an otherwise picturesque rural setting.
But as the song grows toward its formidable crescendo things take a dark but otherwise necessary turn as Sage aims a bow an arrow at the uncanny form of her dinner guest. Her eyes full of an anxiously excited intensity she fires it and sends the thing toppling to the snowy ground, red cloth streaming from its chest like ribbons of blood. A poignant representation of her desire to ultimately let it go.
Sage said of the single: “I think it was an important song for me to release a memory I had been holding on to for a while. It’s a thought that doesn’t leave you no matter how hard you try. It shows up in your living room, in your day-to-day tasks. I wanted to use very literal and realized language to describe the process of getting rid of it, ‘cut it out with a knife’… That felt like such a beautiful visual to me, physically cutting out a memory with a sharp knife.”
Words: Steven Ward
The Rot the new album from Abby Sage arrives on March 1st via Nettwerk, pre-order it here.
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Watch the music video for “Obstruction” the new single from Abby Sage below!
