While directing the musical Once in Montréal, Andrew Shaver and Eva Foote began a beautiful friendship and musical collaboration. After splitting with his girlfriend, Shaver hit the highway and called his buddy Matthew Barber as he drove to Toronto. This was the beginning of a new chapter for Shaver that would see him bounce around a few winter sublets before heading to Australia to – as a buddy so wisely suggested – flip his chi. 

Produced by Barber, Artefact, Shaver’s new album out January 20th, chronicles the journey of that flip. Clever Hopes was born when he got back to Canada and played those songs for Foote. 

We caught up with Clever Hopes regarding her new video below.

Tell us the story of this song, why did you choose to visualize this song specifically? 

This is the song that documents the catalyst for the breakup and, as such, the album. It’s also the first song Eva and I worked on together. We had sorted out harmony lines for her, but it was originally written just from my perspective. We were days away from recording before we realized that we needed to divvy up the verses to really tell the story properly. We switched the pronouns and it came to life in a whole new way. I can’t imagine it otherwise now. It became the blueprint for how we approached the rest of the album in-studio. It’s the kind of broken hearted love song that might come too late to fix things, but just in time to try again.

What was the inspiration behind this video(visuals, storyline, etc.)? 

As soon as we recorded this track, Eva imagined a boxing video for it in which she’d drag me into a ring to kick my ass wearing a unitard and a big ol’80’s hairdo. We didn’t end up going in exactly that direction, but, she does take the solo to teach me a lesson in the middle of an empty parking lot. This video is really the brainchild of my buddy Kyle Gatehouse’s. He conceived of it. He shot it. He edited it. An intense relationship has a way of warping time and memory, and we wanted to create a rapid-fire slideshow of fragmented moments and places, something that looked like how a remembered romance might feel.

What was the process of making this video?

Kyle is a ruthless planner. I fly more by the seat of my pants. This kind of video was never going to work just winging it. But, c’mon, every creative process needs a little room for the unknown. So, Kyle spent hours storyboarding the shots and then we headed out on the shoot days looking for locations that inspired us. It was a great balance between preparation and spontaneity. The shots themselves (the hyperlapse, the match cuts etc) were easy enough to set up and shoot. The work was in the sheer number of them that we needed to capture to make it all happen – to say nothing of the mountain of time Kyle spent editing this monster.

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