Amsterdam-based independent folk artist VanWyck writes songs that are statements clothed in gorgeous layers of sound, with a voice to match.
Her album, ‘An Average Woman’, was released in January to high praise on both sides of the Atlantic, and is dense with fine melodies, poetic observations, and a timely, nuanced, feminist statment. Her latest single, ‘Red River Girl’, is a part of a cycle of songs which seeks to find the lost voices of everyday women across the ages.
All of the female narrators on the record show both vulnerability and strength: everyday women who struggled and failed; from mythical heroines, to untold stories from our own pasts. VanWyck lives inside each of them with ease. Incredibly, this is her debut album – as described by music blog Imperfect Fifth – “the entire album is a keeper,” wrote the critic, noting its “key concepts about confidence, freedom, and being a damn badass as a woman.”
The video for ‘Red River Girl’ was directed by Lithuanian artists, Egle Pernare and Deimante Jasiulevicitue, and underscores the depth of VanWyck’s characterisation, as well as the sensitivity of her feminism. The entire video is dominated by the face of a young woman, sometimes shrouded, sometimes water shimmers over her face, sometimes naked from the shoulders up, and sometimes she appears to be dissolving into the scenery. Throughout everything, she is determined not to be silenced.
Find out more about VanWyck from her official website.
