John Moreland surprise released his new album Visitor last month and now he’s released the video clip for the single ‘Gentle Violence‘.

Directed by Rahul Chakraborty, the video stars actors Jonah Lewis and Drew Pollock, who powerfully portray a family battling addiction and substance abuse.

Moreland says of the song, “Gentle Violence is a song about a strained relationship with a loved one, in the hyper-political post-pandemic USA. The tension and sorrow around the tough relationship are a microcosm of the tension and sorrow we feel as citizens of this broken world.”

In November 2022, Moreland stopped working entirely. He took an entire year off from playing shows and didn’t use a smartphone for 6 months. “At the end of that year, I was just like ‘Nobody call me’. I needed to not do anything for a while and just process,” Moreland says. After nearly a decade in the limelight, constantly jostled by the expectations of his audience, the music industry, and anonymous strangers online, he carved out some time to rest, heal, and reflect for the first time.

The result of that unplugged year at home is Visitor.  Moreland recorded the album at his home in Bixby, Oklahoma, in only ten days, playing nearly every instrument himself (his wife Pearl Rachinsky sang on one song, and his longtime collaborator John Calvin Abney contributed a guitar solo), as well as engineering and mixing the album.