There’s been a proliferation of musicians and performers making synchronous isolation videos, among them the Toronto Symphony Orchestra playing “Appalachian Spring,” the original cast of “Hamilton” reuniting to perform “Alexander Hamilton” on John Krasinski’s YouTube show, and ’90s sketch-comedy troupe The State’s, er, singular reunion to reprise their 25-year-old song “Porcupine Race.” The best so far, though, is KARIO’s clip for their song “We’re Both in Trouble Now.”
The video features the actors and dancers Levi Heaton and Anders Hayward, who filmed their respective parts by themselves, with no crew, inside their separate London apartments. Heaton and Hayward give rich, nuanced performances as they add evocative visuals to a song about the chaos that can result from a moment of serendipity. The tune has an air of inevitability about it, as though what’s happening is as clear as it is unavoidable, and the pair captures a sense of isolation — even desperation — that could scarcely resonate more right now.
Directed by Jonny Sanders, Heaton and Hayward build tension from the start, when he’s eating at the table in his kitchen while she walks restlessly around hers. About a minute and a half in, they begin reacting to, and then largely mirroring, each other’s movements. After she makes faces while he uses the bathroom (wash your hands, Anders!), they look into their cameras at their tables, and then adjourn to their separate living rooms, where their simmering discontent boils over into choreography so passionate, and athletic, that it scarcely seems possible that they put it together without in-person interaction. They did, though, according to Chris Blood, CEO of KARIO’s label, LePel Records. Not only that, Heaton and Hayward acted out their parts simultaneously in real time, in one continuous take. The only edit came in the stairwell scenes toward the end, because they live on difference floors in their respective buildings and it took one of them longer to reach the street. The result is moving, and cathartic.
The song is the last track on a self-titled EP that KARIO released in January. Led by songwriter and singer KARIO, the collective features Jon Natchez (the War on Drugs), Garret Ray (a touring member of Vampire Weekend), Elijah Thomson (Father John Misty), Mitchel Yoshida and Stewart Cole (both of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros), Lewis Pesacov (Fools Gold), and Rachel Goodrich.