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Apr 25, 2023 By Mark Redfern Photography by Tonje Thilesen

Palehound (aka El Kempner) has announced a new album, Eye on the Bat, and shared its first single, “The Clutch,” via a music video. Eye on the Bat is due out July 14 via Polyvinyl. Brittany Reeber and Adam Kolodny directed the video for “The Clutch.” Watch it below, followed by the album’s tracklist and cover artwork.

Eye on the Bat is the follow-up to 2019’s Black Friday, although in 2021 Kempner teamed up with Melina Duterte of Jay Som to form Bachelor and release their debut album, Doomin’ Sun, via Polyvinyl.

Eye on the Bat was recorded across 2022 at Flying Cloud Recordings in the Catskills, with recording done in various brief sessions. Kempner (who uses they/them pronouns) co-produced the album with Sam Owens (Big Thief, Cass McCombs) and also worked with multi-instrumentalist Larz Brogan, a longtime Palehound collaborator.

Of the new single, Kempner says: “‘The Clutch’ is the very first song I wrote for this album, back in 2020 right when lockdown started. I had been on a tour that was sliced in half by the onset of the pandemic and we had to apocalypse road trip back to New York across the country from Oregon, where our next show had been scheduled for. While that was happening, I was also having a triggering romantic experience with somebody I didn’t know too well, and by the time I got home my whole body seemed to be spinning in turmoil. Writing and producing this song grounded me and helped me process a new future and self that I hadn’t anticipated.”

The video’s co-director, Brittany Reeber, had this to add: “Adam (Kolodny, co-director), El, and I wanted to create something that captured the charged, raw drive of the song. Inspired by slick, visceral performance videos of the early ’00s, we got ourselves the biggest space we could find and Adam created a visual aesthetic with the circular track, rotating head and alternating key lights that ultimately build (along with the band’s electric performance) to an epic and dizzying climax.”

Summing up the new album, Kempner says: “It’s about me, but it’s also about me in relation to others. After hiding for so long—staying inside and hiding your life and hiding yourself from the world—I was ready. I think I flipped.”

Check out our COVID-19 Quarantine Artist Check-In interview with Palehound from 2020.

Check out our 2021 interview with Bachelor.

Check out our My Favorite Album interview with Palehound.

Eye on the Bat Tracklist:

1. Good Sex
2. Independence Day
3. The Clutch
4. Eye On The Bat
5. U Want It U Got It
6. Route 22
7. My Evil
8. Head Like Soup
9. Right About You
10. Fadin

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