When Dahl Haus’ ‘Silhouettes and Alibis’ was released on May 28th as part of Paul Is Dead Records’ 60-song AAPI charity compilation album, ‘Subversive To Care,’ the band was honored to be included but caught off guard with no videos or recent photos due to the pandemic. When the NYC Deli Magazine’s review singled the song out with a few others from the bunch, every other band mentioned had a video of their chosen song available. The editor was gracious enough to substitute the only Dahl Haus video he could find – a live cover of PJ Harvey’s ’Dress.’ “She’s one of my idols and it’s seriously my favorite song to cover live,” said frontwoman Blaise Dahl, “but I felt a little bummed that we couldn’t represent our original song properly and better promote the compilation album.” The singer-songwriter describes ‘Silhouettes and Alibis” as “a gothic love song about the contrasting halves of a toxic relationship and someone struggling to break the ties of an unhealthy obsession.”
With COVID precautions making video shoots virtually impossible, Dahl says she got inspired by Lana Del Rey’s DIY spliced “Video Games” music video. “My music is often cinematically inspired. I see my songs visually when I write, in colors as well as little movie vignettes. I wanted the video to be dark and moody, and originally I imagined myself singing while stumbling around in the dark over rocky ground outside a lighthouse. There’s a line that goes ‘My love is Jekyl to your Hyde’ and I wanted to get that spooky, classic vintage feel. I started collecting shadowy images. The story in my mind was like a modern day film noir.” She storyboarded the song and mocked it up with sample clips that still had the copyright watermark. Once she was satisfied with how it would eventually look, she cleared out her bank account to purchase stock footage from Pond5. But just when everything was set to go, her MacBook Pro died and she was unable to edit the final video. “Fortunately, I was able to work remotely for a good part of the last year and a half. I applied for credit to get a new computer and then was told that due to the pandemic there was a chip shortage and it would take weeks for me to get it.”
Ten weeks to the day of “Silhouettes and Alibis” initial release, the film noir fantasy Dahl envisioned was finally ready to drop on YouTube. “I discovered I really enjoy creating videos from other people’s footage,” Dahl added. “I ended up creating a lyric video for our song ‘Helium’ from stock footage too. And next month we expect to drop a very crazy, artsy visual piece for our as yet unreleased song, “Dreamscape.” Still she hopes the fans will soon get to see the faces of her guitarist Daniel Kasshu and herself in a more traditional type of video. “I have hopes that by late October or November I’ll have shot some video of the two of us to promote our song, “Seasick.”
You can download “Silhouettes and Alibis,” as well as the rest of “Subversive To Care” here, exclusively on Bandcamp on a pay-what-you-want basis.
100% of the proceeds will be split evenly to fund the Asian Mental Health Collective, National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum (NAPAWF), and The Tibet Fund.