The Boston-based band Palehound released their debut full-length, Dry Food during the summer by way of Exploding In Sound Records. Since then, we’ve seen inventive videos for singles “Healthier Folk” and “Molly” and heard Ellen Kempner’s excellent cover of Kelly Clarkson’s “Miss Independent” This new video for “CushionedCaging” was created by teens involved in Raw Art Works’ Real To Reel Film School, which is based in Massachusetts. Most of the clip takes place in a nameless waiting room somewhere.
This is your brain on drugs! The video for Palehound’s “Molly” — off Ellen Kempner’s excellent Dry Food debut LP from last year — takes that age-old scare tactic and infamous PSA quite literally. It stars a cute little dude named EggGuy that gets fried up and served on a sandwich. After being eaten, he has some weird hallucinogenic effects on the consumer, which mostly involve deep thoughts about the circle of life and a lot of freaky moving images. Sounds like any trip ever! “EggGuy was concocted during a late morning brunch mishap,” co-directors Lara Jean Gallagher and Brian Kinkley explain. “We wanted to explore the frailty of life, what it means to have consciousness, and how much we could care about a pair of eyeballs. ‘Molly’ has just the right amount of weird sweetness to make this all seem really fun.”
From the debut album “Dry Food”, produced by Palehound and Gabe Wax. Released Aug 2015 on Exploding in Sound (US), and March 4, 2016 on (ROW).
Sometimes Ellen Kempner spits words out like she can barely stand the taste, and her debut album Dry Food certainly covers disgusting things. Kempner cleverly dissects life’s wrinkly underbelly with light and airy folk-rock that oozes empathy and loathing in equal parts. There’s something animalistic about her music, a muted savagery that recalls our own evolutionary roots. Then her razor-sharp wit will reemerge, with a line like, “you made beauty a monster to me,” and her pointed intelligence snaps back into focus. Listening to Dry Food reminds you of the care that humans require though, and the oozing pain that results when we’re mistreated. Here, Kempner has issued a rebuff that’s vulnerable and strong-willed. That’s only natural.
Twenty-one-year-old Ellen Kempner’s guitar prowess is Palehound’s staff of light, a six-stringed burning ember that guides you through her fractured song structures and doleful take on coming-of-age, the basis of Dry Food, an eight-song exploration of Kempner’s mental inner space during the period of 2013 and ‘14. Complex dynamics keep the album’s tracks from blending together into a giant collage, like the colorful travel magazine cutouts that create the cover art. The only constants are Kempner’s guitar and whispering vocals, which draw you into her dark world on tracks like “Molly,” where her counter-melody guitar riff gets attacked by fuzzed-out power chords. Kempner’s soft vocals puncture the heart with earnestness on tracks like “Dry Food” and create distance with the reverb-soaked “Cinnamon,” where her voice interweaves masterfully with gently strummed guitar chords. Dry Food bleeds with emotional truth through a thorny lineage to Kurt Cobain-esque dissociation and mental anguish—which is why it was written in isolation, with Kempner playing all the parts except for drums. There are painful reminders all over this record of what it feels like to be tortured, lonely, abused and directionless—which can be exhausting through eight sugar-free songs. Most of Kempner’s lyrics aren’t easy to decipher, either, but combined with nuanced minor key changes, and juxtaposed with her childlike falsetto, they remind you of the dark-twinkle in the eyes of Sylvia Plath, where nothing is as it seems—like daydreaming over magazine cutouts of paradise, beyond reach.
“Molly” by Palehound from their upcoming full-length debut, “Dry Food”, out August 14th, 2015 on Exploding in Sound Records
Palehound’s debut “Bent Nail” EP was a charming release, one that showed off Ellen Kempner’s inimitable songwriting skills while playing it a bit fast and loose with the hooks. In the intermittent two years, she’s fleshed out her sound — first with last year’s first with last year’s Kitchen 7″, and now with the debut album “Dry Food”, her upcoming first official full-length — and, on the lead single “Molly,” she sounds better than ever.
Ellen Kempner is long-time friends (and current roommates) with Speedy Ortiz’s Sadie Dupuis, and it’s clear that they’ve been watching each other closely. “Molly” features the same kind of seasick, pointed instrumentals of a Speedy song, and the caustic lyricism to match. “Ooooooh, selfish Molly,” Kempner decries the titular character. “Milking all the dudes ’til the bruise.” She urges you to take her side, fuck that selfish Molly. “‘Cause she only knows how to love all alone, in a bed stained by old friends — I swear you better stick with me.” That last line sticks out with a jagged edge, persuasive and enticing.
The Fat Angel Sings 