SOUNDTRACK: PALEHOUND-Dry Food (2015).
I have seen Palehound twice, once as a headliner and once as an opening band (in that order). I love Ellie Kempner’s guitar style and her slackerish vocals. Her lyrics are usually incisive and the way she pulls all of that together is really terrific.
Her recorded output is pretty stellar. She has a few EPs and/or singles and then this, her first album, which comes it at less than 30 minutes. It features some of Kempner’s great guitar, prescient lyrics and really catchy songwriting–a potent combination.
“Molly” opens with a great rumbling bass line, a cool guitar riff and a wonderful overdubbed distorted guitars. It’s immediately catchy. The whole verse is crazy catchy and then after two lines, she adds a new riff before returning to the first one. There’s so much going on and its all terrific. Next up is a cool bridge followed by a third part with yet another great guitar soloing type of riff and loud chorus of “ooooohs.” There is so much going on in this song, I was shocked to see that it’s under 3 minutes long
“Healthier Folk” starts out as a kind of bedroom-sounding acoustic guitar song, but after a verse there’s a trippy chorus with soaring guitars
Mouth ajar, watching cuties hit the half pipe
I only feel half-right
Around healthier folk
But oh, why don’t hold me?
They just
Cradle me like a homesick child
Mid way through, the guitars get louder with a heavy riff before returning to that trippy middle section.
Even though Kempner rocks out, she also has some slower songs. “Easy” is a slow song with this great line: “I’m pushing back your tongue / With my clenched teeth home security system.” I love how the chorus (and more) is just a blast of noise without speeding up the tempo of the song. Two thirds of the way through, the song picks up briefly (“All I need’s a little sleep”). And the last thirty seconds are a wild, chaotic-sounding series of riffs (with a noisy feedbacking guitar solo).
“Cinnamon” has yet another terrific riff. Live, this song absolutely scorches–vocally and guitar wise. This version is a little tamer, but you can really hear what a great guitarist she is.
“Dry Food” starts slowly, with a pretty guitar line and a cool vocal delivery. I love the way the verses are slow and the chorus builds into a strangely catchy melody without really picking the tempo up.
“Dixie” is a quiet confessional with some great lyrics and a catchy chorus.
And people that I’ll never meet
Have been showing up naked in my dreams
And I try to close my eyes but I really want to see
Their breasts like eyes are staring back at me
…
The hair that’s in my shower drain
Has been clogging up my home
And I try to scoop it up but I retch until I’m stuck
To stare and gag into a Dixie cup (with a cough on the repeat of this line)
“Cushioned Caging” is a more aggressive rocker, but her vocals don’t really match the guitar loudness, making you lean in to hear her. The disc ends with “Seekonk,” the longest song on the disc (nearly 5 minutes). It’s slow with a couple of different parts to flesh it out.
Kempner really showcases the various aspects of her songwriting. It’s a really solid album and could easily be much longer.
[READ: January 15, 2018] “The Little Boy”
This short story was interesting in that it seemed far more about an old woman than a little boy.
Mrs. Bea Davis is walking through an airport after visiting her daughter Megan in upstate New York.
We learn a lot about her and her daughters Megan and Susan as well as her ex-husband. We learn some about her because she is talking to her self. A woman with a small boy passed and the boy turned to look at her.
The trip had been okay, as best as could be expected. Bea felt that Megan and her husband enjoyed making fun of ugly people (“That guy is like an anteater in leisurewear. That girl, she can’t wear that dress, look at her stomach.”) the way Bea’s own sisters Tomasina and Livia would go to Woolworth’s and comment on the ugly poor people. (more…)
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This was my third time seeing Ratboys in just over a year. I would have loved to have seen them before this tour (even though I love this album), just to see what they were like before. But this show was fantastic. Not quite as long as the first time I saw them (since this was a co-headlining show), but the band were tons of fun and they threw in a few songs that I hadn’t seen them play before.
Bachelor is the lockdown-inspired collaboration between Palehound’s Ellen Kempner and Jay Som’s Melina Duterte. Their song “Stay in the Car” is one of my favorites this year. I was excited to see both of these great women in a small venue like The Foundry.
I Just Read About That... 