Sam Amidon - “Blue Mountains” (Official Video)

The photograph on the cover of Sam Amidon’s latest album, last year’s Lily-O, shows a couple of young girls sitting in a sun-soaked pasture, innocent to the band of armed men congregated menacingly just over the hill. This sense of blissful ignorance in the face of danger is woven through Amidon’s music subtly, and his haunting, disaffected voice is a constant reminder of this, at once monotonous and deeply evocative. Director Andrea Sisson’s video for Amidon’s song “Blue Mountains” follows an anonymous girl in slow motion through a bucolic Appalachian scene. It’s a sensuous clip that celebrates the adventurousness of youth and mourns its passing all at once.