Watch Albert Hammond Jr.’s Heartbreaking ‘Muted Beatings’ Video
Strokes guitarist Albert Hammond Jr. explores the joy and heartbreak of love in the new video for “Muted Beatings.” The track will appear on the musician’s next solo album, Francis Trouble, out March 9th via Red Bull Records.
Fraser Rigg directed the video, which stars Hammond Jr. and actress Portia Doubleday. The pair play a couple deeply in love, though the video’s romantic, sun-soaked sequences are juxtaposed with scenes that are much darker and veer towards the surreal. Early on, Hammond Jr. opens a door sitting in the middle of a beach and later seems unable to comfort Doubleday as she weeps on the couch. At the end of the video, it becomes clear that Hammond Jr. has died as he watches Doubleday pour his ashes into the ocean.
“I followed Fraser into the abyss,” Hammond Jr. said of the “Muted Beatings” video. “He had a real vision he expressed by saying ‘Love is the one thing that transcends time and space.’ I felt like he was moved by the song and knew how to capture it visually. I understood what he meant but to me the love didn’t represent human connection. I knew It would be the most universal way to show it visually but I found myself realizing the cycle of who I was and what I was about to become, with the death of my old self and the birth of this new person, was what transcended time and space. That love for life, that lust for life is forever reshaping itself.”
Francis Trouble marks Hammond Jr.’s first solo album since 2015’s, Momentary Masters. The record was partially inspired by the stillborn death of the guitarist’s twin.