Palehound’s Ellen Kempner and Jay Som’s Melina Duterte have set a release date for their debut album, ‘Doomin’ Sun’, under their new collaborative project, Bachelor. It also comes with their second single of the project, “Stay In The Car”.
On the bass-heavy rock song, the duo paint a yearning portrait of a woman in a supermarket parking lot, a barely-contained desire oozing out of cotidian lyrics. And the video, quirky and colorful, combines a swath of creative camera lenses with wacky CGI. Watch below.
Recorded just two months pre-pandemic in January 2020, ‘Doomin’ Sun’ features collabs with Big Thief’s Buck Meek and James Krivchenia, as well as Duterte’s partner and Routine-counterpart Annie Truscott of Chastity Belt. The album, recorded mostly in isolation even before that was a normal part of life, deals with a wide range of big themes, from friendship to queerness to climate change, serving as a fitting precursor to our new normal, and painting an unexpected picture of life just before everything changed.
Kempner explains, “I wrote the lyrics to ‘Stay In the Car’ back in December of 2019 when I was in Florida for my partner’s top surgery. I had run out one afternoon, post op, while he was healing to grab lunch for us and as I was gathering my stuff in the parking lot, a big car pulled up and this absolutely beautiful woman got out. She was dressed all in red, dripping with jewelry and had the most wild fiery mane I’d ever seen. She was yelling at the man behind the wheel asking him what he wanted from the store and I wished I was that man. I wanted to be a part of her life, her best friend, her driver, whatever she wanted me to be. I was completely mesmerized.”
Duterte continues, “We wanted this song to be a visceral listening experience, inspired by The Pixies and The Breeders. For the music video, we worked on a two-day shoot with Haoyan of America in Poughkeepsie in extremely cold weather. We all collaborated on the idea that our friendship should be portrayed in a fun and stylish way. Haoyan captured that energy in his own unique and creative lens through his collection of 80s/90s/00s props and toys, CGI, and anything car-themed.”
