CRYSTAL – Heaven (Video Premiere)

Watch the new video for CRYSTAL's latest grunge-soaked single, Heaven

Video by Music Team | 24 Apr 2018

Glasgow-based four-piece CRYSTAL – comprised of Anna Shields, Blair Crichton, Lizzie Reid and Aidan McAllister – first came to prominence when they won a competition, beating almost 500 other entrants, to support Paisley pop star Paolo Nutini at one of his Edinburgh Hogmanay shows in 2016. Since then the band have been booked to play this year’s Electric Fields festival, and are fresh from playing the 2018 Wide Days showcase last weekend.

Seeing them live at Wide Days thankfully confirmed our instant feelings: CRYSTAL are really fucking good. We’ve been looking forward to premiering the music video for Heaven – with you can watch in the above player or on YouTube – as when we first heard the song (almost a month ago now), to us, it was an instant hit. In fact, just hours after hearing the song for the first time, we booked them to play The Skinny's stage at this year’s Kelburn Garden Party.

Heaven builds beautifully from the outset, exploding masterfully into a grunge-soaked chorus that’s one of the catchiest we’ve heard, and upon repeat listens, it just never gets boring. “Heaven is written from the perspective of someone battling the inner turmoil of questioning their religion or belief system," lead singer Shields tells us. “Although the lyrics are quite objective in this case, the song can be interpreted as a metaphor for deconstructing social barriers, conflicting ideology and breaking out of social norms. The lyrics and style of song truly mirror the messages within the song and correlate directly with the music video.

“The style of the song is inspired by some of our favourite grunge bands including Nirvana and The Breeders with vocals hinting towards Wolf Alice and Fleetwood Mac. However, there are some Riot grrrl elements within the vocals too as I take influence from Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill.

“The music video features a montage of close-up, personal and vulnerable images of the whole band with it quickly derailing into a hectic and erratic frenzy, [hoping] to directly portray the message of torment and inner turmoil within the moving images.” Shields continues; “At first we were truly inspired by the works of Courtney Barnett and Wolf Alice when creating the video idea and writing the song. However, once we designed the lighting for the video it seemed to take on its own style with reference to conflict in the lighting colour schemes (blue vs red).

“We shot the music video on behalf of Sailor Jerry in Sailor Jerry's Open House in Glasgow and it was directed and shot by Black Dots Video and Spike Luke Wright from Glasgow School of Art. It was a pleasure working with these extremely talented individuals and we think that they perfectly captured the message of the song within their art and direction.”


Heaven is out now; CRYSTAL play Broadcast, Glasgow, 11 May; Nice N Sleazy, Glasgow, 12 May; Kelburn Garden Party, nr. Largs, 30 Jun; Electric Fields, Drumlanrig Castle, 1 Sep

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