Shades of grey fill the screen as Ruston Kelly’s Jazzmaster guitar drones through the new video for ‘The Weakness’. The video tells the tale of a teen girl who struggles with the weight of domestic violence and her own parent’s psychological damage. Kelly’s voice soars above the choruses as rain washes down over his face.
‘The Weakness’ is the title track of his forthcoming album set to be released on 7th April by Rounder Records. Before Kelly began work on his third album, he moved out of his Nashville home and into an old Victorian bungalow in the small Tennessee town of Portland. There, he spent months on end in deliberate solitude, in an attempt to process a number of life-altering changes he’d endured over the past year, including a very public divorce as well as major upheaval in his immediate family.
Kelly reflects on the song saying, “ ‘The Weakness’ is a potent burst of energy that emerged from a moment of cathartic self-reflection typical of Kelly’s writing process. “I started working on that song and the refrain just kept coming to me – ‘We don’t give in to the weakness,’” he recalls. “The overall narrative of the record is that there’s a variety of weaknesses that I need to deal with, and a variety of strengths that I need to bolster. I truly do believe that acknowledging your weaknesses and digging deeper to understand yourself goes hand-in-hand with becoming a greater human being.”
Kelly is touring in support of the album with U.S. shows starting in June 2023.
