Video: DenMother Shares “Don’t Really Know”

Don’t Really Know finds Sabarah Pilon once again teaming up with filmmaker Jordan Anthony Greer to create another stirring video.

Matt Carter

As DenMother, Fredericton-based musician Sabarah Pilon explores themes of intimacy through self-produced albums full of emotional weight and direct intention. Her music often questions the validity of relationships by pairing tone and lyrics in ways that skillfully highlight the hidden beauty that can exist within the universal self-doubt we spend our lives trying to dismiss or ignore, an act that perhaps offers a degree of reassurance for the guilt we sometimes carry when asking ourselves, “is it alright to feel this way?”

Her latest single, Don’t Really Know, taken from her 2020 album Then Now Forever as well as its expanded 2021 reissue, was released this week along with a video created in partnership with filmmaker Jordan Anthony Greer. While the video appears to play off the idea of a tumultuous relationship, Pilon is intentionally leaving interpretations open by choosing to keep her own explanation to herself.

“I think I want to leave that answer open ended,” she said when asked about the video’s relationship to the song. “That was part of the idea with this video. We thought it would be cool to hear what theories people come up with. It’s really meant to be left up to your own interpretation. Isn’t that frustrating?”

Don’t Really Know was written at the start of the pandemic and was the last song Pilon wrote for her latest album.

“The song was written just as we went into the first lockdown in March 2020. It’s just a tornado of all sorts of feelings and thoughts – aggressive, sad, romantic…all sorts,” she said.

This is the second video from Then Now Forever and the second created with Greer. It follows the October 2020 release of Is It Greener?, filmed across various locations including King’s Landing Historical Settlement.

“Jordan initially reached out to me in 2019 to ask if I’d be interested in doing a video with him and we just hit it off,” said Pilon. “I think he’s so talented and his visual storytelling just really works with what I try to emote musically. I’m lucky to work with him!”