Since her first album dropped in 2016, Little Village reviewers have been heaping praise on Iowa City chanteuse Elizabeth Moen. Kent Williams said of her self-titled debut, “this initial burst of ‘I can do this!’ creativity is remarkable for being so good so quickly.” In Paul Osgerby’s review of her sophomore release That’s All I Wanted, he noted, “she transfigures folk into an experience.” And Alex Kramer wrote of A Million Miles Away, “While Moen has always possessed a certain sage sound, her junior album ups the stakes.”
It’s remarkable for an artist with such a solid grounding to manage these leaps forward in skill and appeal, and the tracks released from her forthcoming album Creature of Habit reveal another exponential shift. Her voice continues its welcome burrowing into your subconscious, destined to become the tonality you imagine as you sing yourself to sleep. And her recently-released single, “Eating Chips,” embraces a whimsy and playfulness that intertwine gently with a sincere and wistful loneliness: a dichotomy that Moen wears well. It’s as hard to pin down as she is, calmly yet emphatically staking out its own place in the canon of Iowa music.
Little Village is pleased to premiere the lyric video for this track. The clever animation echoes both the plaintive country sounds and the playfulness of the storytelling. It’s lovingly tongue-in-(chip-filled)cheek, with a host of country tropes and visual chip gags. And its dynamic color palette does more than its fair share of the narrative heavy lifting.
The video is animated by long-time Moen collaborators Bree Glenn, Josh Delanoit and Austin Smoldt. They have done other videos for her, as well as album art and merch design. The artists have been working together since they met in college at the University of Iowa, and that deep knowledge of each other is evident in this piece. The animated “Eating Chips” video is gorgeous in a way that rises above itself — just like Moen’s alto croon.
