Indie singer-songwriter Brie Stoner introduces the music video, “Love Me Like a Weapon,” providing a foretaste of her upcoming album, Me Veo (I See Myself), slated for release later this year.
Talking about the album in her interview with Eric Mitts, Stoner said, “Just letting this out into the world is my arrival point. Anything beyond that is a gift, and I’m grateful for it, but letting people into these songs that I have been living in for two years, it feels like that’s the offering on the altar of my life. It feels good.”
Born in the U.S., Stoner grew up in Spain, which generated a confluence of unique sonic awareness, along with a bilingual songwriting style reflecting the sensual, dreamy singing of Mazzy Star, on the one hand, and the ‘70s rock savors of Fleetwood Mac, on the other hand.
Later, she caught the ear of Wilco’s Jay Bennet, followed by moving to L.A., where she performed at the Hotel Café and shared the stage with Sia and Katy Perry. Longing for a foundation, Stoner relocated to Michigan, where she continued making music, landing placements in national ads for Victoria’s Secret and shows like Orange Is The New Black.
In due course, she became co-host with Richard Rohr on the Another Name for Everything podcast, followed by launching her own podcast, Unknowing. The pandemic triggered her return to her guitar and piano and songwriting, allowing her to embrace her multiple identities.
Stoner explains, “Spanish and American, academic and artistic, a mother and a lover, spiritual and fleshy. All of these expressions are me, and it felt good to finally bring all these different parts of me into harmonic conversation on this record.”
Opening on a low-slung, elegiac organ, “Loved Me Like a Weapon” flows into a gently, undulating rhythm topped by hints of country leitmotifs merged with wistful, shimmering surfaces. Stoner’s poignant voice, at once tender and melancholy, imbues the lyrics with surrendering tones.
“You left the edges sharp to slice again and again / Never one to call my bluff, even when I’m divided… / Searching across faded photographs… / Where no one’s wrong / No one’s right.”
The video, co-directed by Stoner and Logan Zillmer, depicts Stoner as an assassin trying to break free of her handlers. As she searches for a way out, in the end, her handlers decide to dispose of her. Wounded and bleeding, she falls to the floor of the shower in what Stoner describes as “the anguish of the all too familiar feminine experience of being bribed into silence or even targeted as a problem.”
Brie Stoner has it going on! Simultaneously touching and plaintive, “Loved Me Like a Weapon” evokes feelings of futility in the face of intransigence.
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