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Though it was released back in February, Marissa Nadler’s stunning sixth album July<\/em>\u00a0(on Sacred Bones\/Bella Union<\/a>) is very much rooted in the month it was named for. As she explained\u00a0during an interview with AudioFemme<\/a>, the record deals specifically with her personal experiences, lived from July of 2012 when her romantic relationship dissolved as she self-destructed, through her regret and pain to a place of healing and rekindling lost love in\u00a0July 2013. The record’s emotional centerpiece, “Firecrackers,” deals with that fallout and subsequent recovery with stoic grace, its simple guitar chords nonchalantly lilting around what sounds like a dead-eyed challenge to unnamed “attackers” – it’s me, it’s me, it’s me you’re lookin’ for<\/em>\u00a0– but, for Nadler, was more of an admission of guilt on her own part for the troubles she found herself in back then.<\/p>\n

Just in time for Independence Day, Nadler has released a haunting, black-and-white clip directed by Ryan Hamilton Walsh. Over the brutal opening lines July Fourth of last year \/ We spilled all the blood \/ How’d you spend your summer days?<\/em>\u00a0Nadler’s ghostly image performs destructive, if\u00a0inconsequential actions – smashing glass bottles, throwing her guitar to the forest floor,\u00a0pouring water from buckets. Everything happens\u00a0in rewind, the grainy footage recalling home videos, or how we might imagine our memories would look if others could view them. The symbolism lies in Nadler “undoing” her ruinous behavior, and as the clip progresses, overlays of oozing liquid wash away her pointless sins and obscure her devious past. We’ve all been the kid sticking a bottle rocket in our neighbor’s mailbox, and\u00a0we’ve all been the adult committing crimes we felt were\u00a0victimless that lead to our own demise. Nadler puts the two on par by juxtaposing\u00a0the innocuous imagery in the “Firecrackers” video with her real, lived experience in the song’s lyrical content, reminding us that no matter how\u00a0calamitous our lives,\u00a0there is no rewinding or rewriting history – all that’s left is to forge ahead.<\/p>\n