The Australian bush has never needed much help feeling slightly menacing.
From Wake in Fright to Picnic at Hanging Rock, it has long been a dependable setting for bad decisions, strange disappearances and people gradually losing the plot.
Jean Elliot taps neatly into that tradition on ‘Beneath Your Sun.’
Lifted from her debut concept EP, Butcher, Lover, Runner, the track now has a suitably grim music video directed by emerging filmmaker Nirash Perera – head to their official YouYube page to watch it now.
The clip moves between the band performing deep in the bush and Elliot playing a scorned lover taking revenge on a scarecrow built in the image of her ex.
She puts it together, stares it down and eventually destroys it, which is probably healthier than sending several regrettable paragraphs at 1am.
There is flannelette, dry scrub and plenty of rural symbolism, but the video never feels like it is ticking off a list of Australian gothic clichés.
Perera keeps things loose, cutting between the scarecrow revenge plot and the full band playing among the trees.
The gothic imagery is strong, and the song itself is a gem.
‘Beneath Your Sun’ rolls along on fuzzy, down-tuned alt-rock guitars, with a worn and slightly warped edge.
The guitars give the track plenty of weight, alongside the layered vocoder harmonies, but it’s Elliot’s vocals that hold it all together.
She sounds bruised and restrained in one moment, then pushes into something sharper without ever overplaying it. That balance is what makes it work.
The feeling underneath it is also painfully familiar: embarrassment, anger and the slow business of getting over someone who probably does not deserve this much material.
Raised in the Hawkesbury, Elliot has built Butcher, Lover, Runner around the landscape, and the folklore of the region.
Across six tracks, the EP moves through outlaw country, grunge, folk horror and alt-rock, following a story filled with witch-hunts, fugitives, violent brotherhoods and doomed romance.
It is an impressive concept record, particularly for a debut. The setting and characters are detailed, but the songs are strong enough to live outside the wider story.
‘Beneath Your Sun’ is one of the clearest examples. It is immediate enough to work on its own, without losing the strangeness that runs through the rest of the project.
Elliot’s connection to the Hawkesbury also goes beyond her own music. She runs Doghouse, a local collective that books events and gives regional artists somewhere to play, helping bring a little more life back into the area’s music scene.
The video makes a strong entry point into all of it. It is strange, funny in places and rough around the edges in exactly the right way.
More importantly, it leaves you wanting to spend a little more time in Jean Elliot’s Devil’s Wilderness.
‘Beneath Your Sun’ and its accompanying music video are out now.
