The music video for “Moses,” the new single from Jonathan Emile, opens in a soccer field populated with kids. Slowly but surely we find our way through a barber shop, a roadside, and finally to an isolated sliver of ocean, where Emile himself is waiting for us with a bold vocal melody. In the next four and a half minutes, what unfolds feels as much like a piece of independent cinema as it does a visual depiction of “Moses” playing out in real-time; here, an unspoken story is told through both harmony and DIY-hued shots strung together with delicate precision.
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Though I listened to this song before I ever watched the video, I don’t think that latter fails to properly capture the narrative in the track at all. There’s a clear emotional investment on the part of Emile here, and it runs deeper than his proven connection with the creativity he’s shown off in past recordings. The cultural subtext is artful and comforting, as if to invite us into a world we might not have otherwise seen or even had the privilege of knowing about, much less understanding. There is a transcendent message in “Moses,” and it doesn’t take a super fan to appreciate it.
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“Moses” does feel a little bloated in length for how unfanciful it is by design, but I don’t think Emile was intentionally trying to drag out the running time here at all. There are certainly ways in which the song could have been more efficiently pieced together, even with regards to the dexterously-directed music video, but all in all, there’s not enough fat on this piece for me to deem it anything other than a really passionate, albeit rather exhausting, ballad from a songwriter with a lot to say to his audience.
APPLE MUSIC: https://music.apple.com/us/album/moses-single/1487902635
Whether in its music video or standard single form, “Moses” is a song that I think indie fans are going to have an opinion about – one way or another – and with the right support from the American underground, I can absolutely see it giving Jonathan Emile a segue into a U.S. market that had previously evaded his grasp. He’s got a skillset that is still in development for all intents and purposes, but it took some real chops to compose the framework of this single in the first place. Emile isn’t the hottest of the hot shots yet, but this release tells me he could be one day.
Levi Colston