The Pinkerton Raid, the solo project of Durham, NC-based songwriter Jesse James DeConto, shares a new music video for the song “Blood in My Eyes” today, ahead of a performance in Athens later this week. The track appears on The Pinkerton Raid’s fifth album, The Highway Moves the World, an intimate collection of a dozen songs that were each inspired by a family member or friend.
Processing a disintegrating friendship, “Blood in My Eyes” specifically confronts the complexity of emotions that can surface when having a conflict with a loved one. The song allows listeners to embrace vulnerability and ride out any ill-willed thoughts, with the hope of finding compassion for oneself and the other person by the end.
“To me, one of the great ironies of adulthood is that we have to control our emotions just when the stakes start getting really high: our livelihoods and futures, responsibility for our hopes and dreams and intimate relationships,” says DeConto. “A grown man expressing anger or despair is, frankly, kind of scary. There’s an element of violence in the feelings that ‘Blood in My Eyes’ expresses, but they’re childish feelings. Hitting, hurting or hating can seem appealing because they momentarily make us feel something other than vulnerability. Of course, reacting in this way only makes things worse.”
“For the video, I wanted dancers to capture the physicality of the feeling of betrayal, but I had the idea that we should cast children, as a reminder that we’re all vulnerable and that none of us deserve to be treated badly,” says DeConto.
Starring dancers Tabitha Lawing and Beatrice Peacock, the music video was filmed at the DanceFX Athens studio on Foundry Street last summer. Director and editor Chris Greer—who is well-known for his landscape photography and TV series “View Finders”—was joined by assistant director and choreographer Sarah Lawing of The Lonesome Dawn and HEART Music.
The Pinkerton Raid will perform at Flicker Theatre & Bar on Thursday, Feb. 2 with local honky-tonk punks Newport Transplant and Virginia folk trio Palmyra. Admission costs $10 and doors open at 8 p.m.
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