Mol Sullivan likes deadlines. The award-winning Cincinnati-based singer/songwriter thrives when the clock is ticking, which could be a reason why she decided to direct her newest music video, "Deep End Dive," somewhere with an incredibly tight schedule: Over-the-Rhine’s Ziegler Pool in the middle of a record breaking-hot summer.
“I noticed in the last year or two I’m really good at rising to occasions,” Sullivan said over the phone. “I realized that procrastination has really just been me giving myself an occasion to rise, to put myself kind of in a state of panic and urgency.”
Sullivan released the "Deep End Dive" single and accompanying music video on July 29.
While the creative process can be chaotic, the end result of Sullivan’s new video is anything but. The video for "Deep End Dive" is a collection of bright-yet-melancholic, tightly composed video portraits where Sullivan dons a variety of summery red and white outfits and sings over mellow guitar-driven rhythm with a solid low end. In one shot she wears a cowgirl hat and shirt while holding a melting vanilla ice cream cone, later she’s playing a guitar solo underwater in a bikini; eating a mustarded corndog in a yellow-stained white tank-top; singing into a cherry popsicle, her lips smeared red; “air guitaring” on a tennis racket in full tennis skirt getup — all a reflection of Sullivan’s creative versatility and deadpan sense of humor orchestrated into a Wes Anderson-like work of visual show and tell.
The video features the Rhine-Stones Synchro Swim Team, who fill the screen with their fluid (pun intended) motion while Sullivan stares off and sings. The lyrical content speaks of transformation, of mournful self improvement: “Oh, the bitter taste of it / Of learnin' how to give / You take me away from all of it.”
This attitude is a reflection of Sullivan’s journey to sobriety, which she embraced several years ago. Perhaps the most compelling image to encapsulate her new life is simple: the floating electric guitar, a white solid body Ibanez drifting atop stark blue pool water.
“It felt significant, like it was the sacrificial lamb in memoriam of my past self,” Sullivan says. She purchased the guitar around a decade ago after primarily playing acoustic guitar, during a time in her life where, she explains, she was drinking around the clock.
“Alcohol, for me, I had created in my head it was this creative nectar,” Sullivan says. “It gives the illusion of making things more interesting … and it took me away from everyone and everything I care about. It was taking me from myself.”
Sullivan was hesitant to even use the white Ibanez guitar and instead thought she would use an inexpensive blue one, but that didn’t match her art direction’s color scheme (no red, white and blue, thanks). Sitting in the driveway on the way to film the video, blue guitar in tow, she last-minute decided to use the white one instead.
“I’m really glad I did that, because that mother fucker floats,” she says. “I thought it was going to sink.”
She says the underwater guitar shots were especially difficult due to the instrument’s buoyancy, but it was worth the challenge.
“There’s some bloopers where I look like those videos when they hold newborns in water and they kind of swim,” she says. “Trying to hold my guitar underwater, my whole body's bubbling up to the surface.”
Sullivan, thanks to her determination and strength, did not sink. Like her guitar, she rose to the occasion and floats on.
Sullivan is working on a new album, “Goose,” produced by Sima Cunningham. The album is expected in 2023. Listen to "Deep End Dive" and learn more about Sullivan's upcoming album at molsullivan.com.
Watch Sullivan's music video for "Deep End Dive":
Stay connected with CityBeat. Subscribe to our newsletters, and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google News, Apple News and Reddit.
Send CityBeat a news or story tip or submit a calendar event.
