Letting go of someone is never easy. Their memory haunts you as you long for a familiar touch, a warming embrace and a comfortable knowledge of you. It’s difficult to put into words, let alone song and video, but Holly Overton manages to explore this fact of life, gracefully, tastefully, and eloquently, in her new video for “Living Without You.” Lush synth flows through your chest and out your fingertips in the song’s complete and gratifying introduction. Her accompanying band, Midnight People (Alex Fippinger, Russel Hymowitz and Paul Blackwell), is ever present from the start, but they kind of take a backseat to the luminous shimmer of keys in these opening bars. Overton’s melancholy is established immediately with her vocals, and suddenly her synth kind of dips out of the mix, its absence noticeable, as though representative of the lover over whom she laments. We hear it again, but it’s never quite as full as that introduction. Or is that just the overly sentimental perception of someone who also misses someone?
The visuals, directed by Nikki Belfiglio, exist in three states, jumping from one to the other in the same way one’s focus is all over the place after a separation. First, there exists Overton by her lonesome, sitting on a floor and/or theatrically dancing her pain away. Then flashbacks of home life with her former sweetheart creep in rather irrepressibly, a clash of the fondness of her memories and the bitterness of their slipping away. Third is Overton determinedly playing live with Midnight People, her stage presence a statement in and of itself that everything will go on, everything will be ok. Here’s hoping it will.
Holly Overton plays a release show at Sunnyvale (also her 30th birthday!!!) on May 4, alongside PRIMA, Annie Hart (of Au Revoir Simone) and Shaasta (Drew Citron of Beverly).
