While Aotearoa New Zealand artist Gina Malcolm is gearing up to release her debut album, First Rodeo, she has been connecting with audiences for a long time, as a radio and television journalist and presenter of TV3’s Nightline in the 1990s.
During that successful career, recording and releasing music was a long-held dream – although, as Malcolm says, ‘It’s always been about the music. I live for it.’
Malcolm has released several singles this year and last, and the first single from the album was ‘Travellin’ Heart’, released in July. In late September she released the haunting ‘Blood Left’, written with and produced by her countryman Matt Joe Gow, an established Americana artist in his own right who also plays the hypnotic guitar hook and solo on the track which establishes the mood of the song – including its turbulence – and anchors Malcolm’s contemplative vocal.
The video for ‘Blood Left’, which is having its premiere here today, was shot on an iPhone in beachside Coogee in Sydney under a full moon. With its shadows, flaring street lights and crashing waves, it is a fitting accompaniment to the light and shade and roiling in the song. Malcolm walks both towards and away from the camera, headphones on, suggesting she’s in her own world but also connected to us through the very song we’re (both) listening to.
Much like the song itself, the video will make you want to go back again and again, and also make you intrigued for what else is to be found on First Rodeo, which will be released this month.
