My eyes turn numb, our hearts dissolve, watch the faces rise
My eyes turn numb, and in the reeds I glow
Here where the worlds divide…
Brooklyn-based dream pop band The Harrow debut the video for “Island of Willows,” a track from their forthcoming EP The Drowned World.
Created and edited by multidisciplinary artist Joan Pope, the impressionistic video unfolds as a drifting, painterly meditation on the blurred boundary between beauty and decay, evoking Ophelia-like imagery. Known for her project Temple ov Saturn, which fuses collage, music, video art, augmented and virtual reality, poetry, and zines into richly layered allegories, Pope has also released music with Blacktantra and The Whip Angels. Her previous video work includes visuals for Blacklist, Gwenno, and Rites of Sin, as well as the title track from The Harrow’s 2024 Cinderglow EP.
“Island of Willows” is a lush, slow-burning composition steeped in longing, with dense layers of electric, acoustic, and slide guitars weaving together in a gauzy haze. Echoes of Souvlaki-era Slowdive, Mazzy Star’s nocturnal melancholy, and the aching sprawl of Neil Young’s “Cortez the Killer” ripple through its DNA. The video mirrors this atmosphere through recurring motifs of water and flowers, conjuring a liminal dreamspace that feels at once immersive and elusive, like a memory dissolving even as it takes shape.
Joan Pope offers a few words about the creation of the video:
“Most of my video and artwork is inspired by myth and literature. When I first heard ‘Island of Willows,’ I immediately thought of Ophelia, especially as depicted by John Everett Millais. I used layering and soft distortion to create an atmosphere where beauty and dissolution are indistinguishable. It has an overall Pisces/12th house vibe – the imagery drifts into a place of quiet undoing and surrender, which I felt paired naturally with the emotional depth of the song.”
Guitarist Greg Fasolino, who wrote the music and lyrics for “Island of Willows,” reflects on the track’s origins:
“Despite being a musician for over four decades, this was the first song I ever wrote entirely on my own, and the first time I attempted lyrics. From the moment the chords came to me, I felt the presence of water, which led me to draw on my fascination with Algernon Blackwood’s 1907 supernatural novella ‘The Willows.’ There’s both reverence and sadness in it – a kind of bittersweet psychic paralysis in the face of the cosmic. It’s about glimpsing something beyond understanding, where another dimension brushes against our own, and trying to hold onto that feeling of awe.”
The Drowned World EP will be released digitally on all major platforms on May 15th. Watch the video and below and pre-order the album on Bandcamp here.
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Header photo by Chris Scalzi/Distilled Studio. Cover design by LeeAnn Falciani.
