Exclusive Premiere: Pennsylvania Act Heron’s Poignant Video for ‘Gravity Shift’

Members of Pennsylvania post-rock band Heron are based in a part of the U.S. known as the Pennsylvania Wilds, in rural towns. With lesser light pollution, the clear night skies seem to have led them to write an album like Sun Release, which is inspired by space travel. Guitarist Boyd Lewis tells us, “We can see the Milky Way from our backyards.”

Sun Release coincidentally has a bigger connection to space travel. It was released on July 19th, a day before the 50th anniversary of the Moon Landing by Apollo 11, which occurred on July 20th, 1969. The band, who have been active since 2016, took it one step ahead with their ambitious music video for the emotive track “Gravity Shift.”

Directed by filmmaker and visual effects artist H. Haden Hammond (whose VFX credits include movie series such as Avengers, X-Men and Guardians of the Galaxy), Heron receive a perfect visual narrative for “Gravity Shift.” Through a hazy treatment that adds to the surreal nature, the astounding video shows a young girl dreaming of going into space, interspersed with footage of a woman astronaut landing back on earth after a mission. Lewis adds, “We captured a live shooting star on camera [for the music video.] It’s in the final cut!”

Pennsylvania post-rock band Heron. Photo: Light in the Dark Photography

The idea of casting women astronauts also created another coincidence with current events – NASA’s announcement of the Artemis missions, whose crew will include the first woman to land on the Moon by 2024. Guitarist Ben Blick says, “We hope dads and parents watch this video with their daughters, and tell them about the Artemis Mission.”

Sun Release follows Heron’s 2017 debut You Are Here Now, which featured the breakout song “Shores.” Of course, the term ‘breakout’ can use perspective when you’re a post-rock band, but the song received over five million Spotify streams. But Lewis mentions that it didn’t exactly weigh on the band when they were writing Sun Release. He says, That has been an incredible and very strange experience for us since the moment that it took off the way that it did […] It absolutely made us second-guess certain aspects of our process for the new record. But it also gave us a really good target to aim above.”

With Sun Release now out and a Midwest U.S. tour coming up, Heron are keen to look overseas. “We’d love to add an international tour in 2020 – Europe, India or Southeast Asia are on our wishlist,” Lewis says. Another long-term goal includes doing soundtrack work for film or television. “But writing albums is always going to be our true love,” the guitarist adds.

Watch the video for “Gravity Shift” below. Watch the behind the scenes video here.