The visceral palette of ‘Eye on the Bat’ has an unexpectedly joyful high quality
There are huge rock riffs on Eye on the Bat, however El Kempner additionally stretches the sound of Palehound to new locations.
Tonje Thilesen/Courtesy of the artist
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Tonje Thilesen/Courtesy of the artist
There are huge rock riffs on Eye on the Bat, however El Kempner additionally stretches the sound of Palehound to new locations.
Tonje Thilesen/Courtesy of the artist
Eye on the Bat, the most recent album from Palehound, is stuffed with physique components. There is a “shaking fist” and a “b**** that grows like hair.” There is a punch within the face; one other within the intestine; one other within the arm. Our bodies are held like a dinner plate, a paperweight, a tiny clock. Not one however two songs function bloody palms.
Throughout Palehound’s earlier three albums, singer and songwriter El Kempner has been no stranger to filling their songs — wiry indie rock that mixes poignant reflections with Kempner’s skillful, playful strategy to guitar — with sharp imagery. The place a lot of Black Friday, their final launch, was stuffed with the liberating pleasure of latest love, Eye on the Bat turns the power of Kempner’s consideration towards a pair simultaneous collapses. In early 2020, Palehound was purported to tour the nation behind Black Friday; because the tour bought scrapped and the world shut down, Kempner’s romantic relationship fell aside, too. All through Eye on the Bat, Kempner renders these crises as bodily experiences: a “abdomen doing backflips,” a “chilly feeling rising in my throat,” a personified evil with which they “share a cranium.” The visceral palette provides the report a way of directness, like there isn’t any solution to conceal the reality; even when Kempner is partaking with metaphor, you possibly can really feel the which means in your intestine.
Eye on the Bat is not a wholly brooding pay attention, or solely a doc of catastrophe: Palehound has at all times been a car for Kempner’s acrobatic, nimble guitar enjoying, and right here, there is a joyful high quality to the vary of kinds they deploy. Kempner has not too long ago cited inspiration from fellow guitarists like Adrianne Lenker, Hannah Learn of Lomelda and Meg Duffy of Hand Habits — all mates of theirs who favor artistic, ingenious approaches over basic rock-god stylings. Kempner has stated specifically that, whereas on tour with Massive Thief, they admired and aimed to emulate Lenker’s fingerpicking model, and you may hear that affect within the intricate acoustic riffs throughout Eye on the Bat. That is to not say Kempner has deserted their love of massive rock riffs fully — the album is teeming with propulsive power and artistic textures; plus, songs like “The Clutch” and “Head Like Soup” function huge, superb guitar solos. In between Black Friday and this new report, Kempner additionally fashioned the band Bachelor with multi-instrumentalist and producer Melina Duterte of Jay Som. They’ve stated the expertise of working with Duterte gave them confidence after they stepped into the studio to make Eye on the Bat, which Kempner co-produced alongside Sam Owens. It allow them to stretch the sound of Palehound to new locations, as on “U Need It U Obtained It,” a charmingly unsteady, warbling observe about devotion and disconnects, that Kempner produced virtually fully at residence.
Eye on the Bat finds its most spectacular moments of readability when Kempner highlights the disconnect between the physique and the mind — as on the album’s putting opening observe, the place Kempner describes a romantic gesture that devolves into a sense of absurdity. On the cathartic “Independence Day,” Kempner wonders why a freak automobile accident did not convey them and their soon-to-be-ex nearer: “All it did,” they sing, “was drive the purpose residence in my physique and my thoughts.” Generally, our mind is aware of one thing earlier than our physique can catch up; generally it takes the shock of one thing bodily for our thoughts to simply accept the reality. By cataloging the painful reality of those moments, Palehound provides a reminder of the way it feels to outlive them.
