Premiere: Crook’s ‘Lavender’ is a Haunting Journey Through Self-Doubt

Gifted artists excel at translating feelings into moving, breathing, expressive works that are vastly relatable while still maintaining a deeply personal touch. Such is the breadth of Crook's latest video for "Lavender," directed by Matthew Kaundart.

"I have been looking for the words that I have found in 'Lavender' since high school," said Daniel Crook. "I grew up in a small, conservative, rich town where hair dye, fingernail polish and sodomy would turn a boy into a pariah. A town where I spent my afternoons in the boys locker room asking myself, 'Why? Why this body, in this era?'"

Now, Crook is reliving that period of self-doubt and questioning through the soaring vocals of "Lavender," played against grainy home movie-style footage and intimate interactions.

The story in "Lavender" is a continuation of Crook's previous video for "Fault," with this newer work holding a more significant personal meaning. Annie Montgomery appears as she did in "Fault," where Crook considers her "the holy, omnipresent feminine." Having been lost and asleep in "Fault," she is now wide awake and have Crook and his lover "perform with and for one another in an attempt to seduce and invoke ourselves toward her brilliant light. We struggle past man's rebuke of femininity where it is easy to succumb to anger, violence and pride."

Crook said he's "written a hundred songs, at least, attempting to convey that teenage feeling; that I could only be loved if only I were a woman. The feeling that there is no escape. How some of us never get to leave that town, finding ourselves falling in love time and time again with people that society says will never love us back." Watch the OUT premiere of Crook's evocative video, below.