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Bachelor, the new project from Melina Duterte (Jay Som) and Ellen Kempner (Palehound), is not a band, it’s a friendship. After being mutual fans for years, putting each other’s songs on playlists and scouring YouTube for live videos, they finally met when sharing the bill at a show in Sacramento in 2017. Keeping in touch over text and Instagram posts, Duterte and Kempner started recording together for fun at Duterte’s Los Angeles home studio in 2018, resulting with what would become “Sand Angel”, the seductive slow-burner that convinced the pair to write an album together.

Reconvening in January 2020, the duo packed the entirety of Duterte’s recording equipment into two cars and headed to a rental house in Topanga, CA. In this space Kempner and Duterte hybridized their individual songwriting talents, producing a collection that slips between moods with ease and showcases their lyrical prowess. Arriving with almost no songs written and no solid plan, they finished the 10 songs that make up Doomin’ Sun after two short weeks, That much work in so little time may sound exhausting, but it wasn’t, it was blissful and freeing.

About halfway through, Buck Meek and James Krivchenia of Big Thief came by the house. Meek brought guitar pedals and a beautiful old Martin acoustic to generously lend to the project, and Krivchenia elevated a few of the songs by tracking drums while Duterte’s partner Annie Truscott (Chastity Belt) recorded strings to accentuate moments on the album. Aside from those contributions, Kempner and Duterte spent their time in isolation, a fitting precursor to the remainder of the year, but the songs on Doomin’ Sun are anything but isolating. These songs tell stories that will surely be recognizable to listeners, especially when they offer up interpretations of modern life.

There was a lot of pain that went into the record, especially around themes of queerness and climate change inspired by the red skies and wildfires subsuming Australia at the time. However, when the duo did shed tears during the creative process, they weren’t tears of sadness, they were tears of laughter. When Kempner and Duterte look back on those weeks, what they remember first is shortness of breath and the inability to track vocal takes without falling to the floor howling. They couldn’t remember a time they’d ever been so delirious with creativity, so overwhelmed with joy.

Tracklist

1 Back Of My Hand
2 Sand Angel
Stay In The Car
Went Out Without You
Spin Out
Anything At All
Moon
Sick Of Spiraling
Aurora
10 Doomin’ Sun

The album is set for release on the 28th May 2021 but Bachelor have already released the super fun video for ‘Stay In The Car’ getting listeners excited!!

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