Halifax sibling duo Overnight (Carla & Lynette Gillis) return with “Strong and Good,” the tender and reflective new single from their upcoming sophomore album, Put Me In Your Light (out November 7th via Label Obscura). Written in the wake of their father’s sudden passing and a difficult move home from Toronto during the pandemic, the song captures both the weight of grief and the forward motion of resilience.

“I don’t typically have anything clear in mind when I sit down to write lyrics, but this one turned out to be about grief,” shares Carla Gillis (guitars, piano, lead vocals). “It was really hard to lose our dad, and it was really hard to leave Toronto and our community. The song came out of grief, but it’s also about the impulse to not be entrenched in it all the time. To shake it off and keep going. Rhythmically, it has a forward propulsion to it. Melodically, it’s fairly upbeat. To me, it’s shaped as much by resilience as sadness.”

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

It’s about trying to carry on and reach for things that bring you comfort despite the grief you’re feeling. It’s about the small pleasures that mean so much and choosing to focus on them when possible to help yourself through hard moments. We chose to visualize this song because we thought it would make a good first single from the new album and we happened to have archival footage that seemed like a good fit with the melancholy nature of the song. 

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

Family, home, loss, reflection, sharing parts of ourselves we don’t usually share with people, our relationship with each other, finding joy in the mundane, life being made up of all the small day to day moments, time passing. We wanted to make something with all the old 8 mm home videos we made as kids in the 90s. It’s footage we’ve never shown anyone and it seemed fitting for this song. Some of the footage is a little embarrassing but also freeing not to care too much about how we may be perceived. It’s us entertaining ourselves as kids in the suburbs of Halifax, never having expected anyone else to see it. And my god, did we ever do a lot of karaoke! We were obsessed with wanting to be rock stars. 

3.What was the process of making this video? 

It was a combination of working with our 8 mm tapes from the 90s and shooting new footage, which was also shot on 8 mm tape. Both the old and new footage was shot by Carla and I. We watched through hours upon hours of archival footage, selecting clips we thought could work, and filmed ourselves over a weekend in Mabou, Cape Breton and back home in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. We brought two old film cameras with us and just shot ourselves hanging out, entertaining ourselves, often doing a whole lot of nothing just like we did back in the day. Our friend, Ian Hart, kindly digitized all the footage. The photographer and director, Colin Medley, did the editing and did a brilliant job. We sent him piles of footage with notes and he somehow made it come together. Never underestimate a good editor!