Kelly Kirwan
An empty yellow chair sits in a field of neatly pressed and plowed hay, the introductory focal point of Ella Williams' latest video, "Daylight Savings." Slipping into her musical persona, Squirrel Flower, Williams lures us into landscapes that should be overwhelmingly mundane—dreary, even, with a hint of ennui. But there’s something subtly unusual that has our eyes transfixed, a dream that bears too much resemblance to our everyday, leaving a hangover of the surreal.
“I know it’s daylight savings, dear / But I can’t sleep,” Williams sings, her voice both delicate and resonantly powerful, making her lyrics elegant and enrapturing. Intermittently we see Williams draped across the yellow chair, staring into the lens of the camera, a bouquet of white flowers in her hands. Predominantly though, we see two women, alternately standing side by side in the field and the purple lighting of a nondescript room. They move in tandem, their languid choreography evocative of modern dance. In the intertwining shots that feature Williams, she's standing on a bed, strumming her guitar, or her silhouette is outlined dimly on a wall, a loose arrangement of flowers part of her shadowy profile.
Williams is a bit of an enigma in this video, her face either looking off-camera or set in a contemplative expression that's difficult to read. She’s a mystery you find yourself leaning in to understand, trying to get a grasp on her crystalline voice as she sings, “I know we’ve gained an hour / But it feels like I’ve lost two.” "Daylight Savings" is a song of slight disorientation, the bending of time, that we simply assign to the natural change of seasons. An unsteadiness that we welcome, and hell, by the end of the song, crave.