See Yola’s ‘Ride Out in the Country’ Video From Dan Auerbach-Produced Album
Yola’s thoughts take a dark turn in the music video for her sunny new song “Ride Out in the Country,” the first to be released from her debut LP Walk Through Fire, produced by Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys.
The British singer-songwriter — born Yolanda Quartey, then known as Yola Carter, and now simply as Yola — takes a literal drive through the countryside in the video, which was directed by Reid Long. Her old Chevy pickup cruises through bucolic scenery, stopping to fuel up at a vintage gas pump, all of which is a perfect complement to her dusky, soulful vocals and the song’s dreamy melody that floats along on Seventies soft-rock keys.
That weightless feeling gets jarringly pulled down to earth when Yola then proceeds to pull two bodies out of the bed of the truck and buries them in a shallow grave. But in a surreal twist, one of those bodies is her own, a metaphorical letting go that matches the song’s refrain: “I take a ride out in the country in the soft summer breeze, forgetting about you, forgetting about me.”
“Lyrically the song is about escapism and the video adds an awesome twist,” Yola says in a statement accompanying the release. “We wrote the song about getting away from an oppressive environment. I was in an abusive relationship a while back, so I drew on the feeling of relief and release that I had when I truly felt free.”
Yola, who grew up in poverty in Bristol, released an EP titled Orphan Offering in 2016, but her collaboration with Auerbach isn’t her first major collaboration. She previously performed with Massive Attack, and also played with a band of her own, Phantom Limb. But Walk Through Fire, recorded at Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound in Nashville, also sees appearances by Vince Gill, Johnny Cash’s bassist Dave Roe, plus Gene Chrisman, Bobby Wood, and Molly Tuttle.
Walk Through Fire arrives February 22nd on Easy Eye Sound. The full track list for the album includes:
- “Faraway Look”
- “Shady Grove”
- “Ride Out in the Country”
- “It Ain’t Easier”
- “Walk Through Fire”
- “Rock Me Gently”
- “Love All Night (Work All Day)”
- “Deep Blue Dream”
- “Lonely the Night”
- “Still Gone”
- “Keep Me Here”
- “Love Is Light”