Former TEEN-member and Halifax-export Lizzie Lieberson, AKA Lizzie Loveless, is on the edge of releasing an album as an act of re-emergence into the world. In the wake of health complications that quashed TEEN’s tour plans, Lizzie Loveless has had to undergo a re-invention of herself and her career. Those challenges have a way of putting things into perspective—though, as her new Charles Billot-directed video for “Memory” demonstrates, the harsher flipside of perspective is withdrawal.
At the center of “Memory” is Loveless, the spinning axis of her visible universe, yet completely removed from it and lost in her memories with the most practical application of time as a non-linear plane. Loveless reflects on the nature of grief, the mixed blessing of forgetting, and the physical quality of memory, almost to the point that we might believe that memory is a temporary escape from time itself.
“‘Memory’ asks the question ‘where does love go when it’s been lost?’,” ponders Loveless. “Does it get reabsorbed and hide somewhere in the body? And when the memory of someone begins to fade it’s as if you’re losing that person all over again. It’s about the fear of letting go of a love. It’s about losing track of time and whether you are in love, you’re experiencing loss or somewhere in between.”
Billot’s video for “Memory” is a cool feat in itself, expressing all too well the feeling of finding yourself even more alone in a crowded room. The feast placed in front of Loveless may as well be a wall of static; the everpresent inconvenience of the universe’s background noise that has arisen as a permanent wall of fog between you and anyone else, having been sufficiently subjected to enough perspective to know there’s no coming back from it, at least not entirely. Despite Loveless’ cool demeanor, her grief is palpable.
Lizzie Loveless’ upcoming album, You Don’t Know. The full album is set to be released on September 17, 2021, via Richmond, Virginia-based label Egghunt Records.