The latest from Vanessa Daou finds her in four-on-the-floor mode with a flowing groove of thick beats and catchy hooks. “Trouble Comes” follows the political motif set by its parent album, Light Sweet Crude, but maintains the all sexual drama that the singer is noted for. Nearly drowning in the swathes of the song’s atmosphere, the singer at once signals the trouble at both a brewing riot and a crumbling relationship: “Trouble comes when you hear the drums.”
For its video, Daou eschews the swanky, high glamour of her previous clips (“Near the Black Forest”, “Two to Tango”) for a grainy, lo-fi exploration into structure and movement, the stylistic results owing much to the experimental probings of avant-garde conceptualists Maya Deren and Valie Export. “[It’s] the idea of duality & fluidity I’m exploring,” the singer says of the Rorschach inkblot body patterns in the video. A trained dancer, Daou shows off a series of languid, kaleidoscopic moves while keeping sway to the pulse of the song.