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Catherine Elicson: Empath's Bandleader Goes Solo on River Of Fat

Catherine Elicson ·
Catherine Elicson press photo by Evan Eisel
Image via stereogum.com

If you know Empath, you know the beautiful mess: the proudly chaotic Philadelphia DIY band whose 2022 album Visitor earned Stereogum's Album Of The Week nod. Now bandleader Catherine Elicson is stripping that chaos down to its barest parts. Her first solo album, River Of Fat, arrives November 6 on Community Music, and it was made with almost nothing: a guitar, a sampler, a synth, and a four-track recorder, at home, with engineer Shaun Sutkus the only other person involved.

That constraint is the whole point. Where Empath pile noise on noise until it turns ecstatic, Elicson alone sounds exposed and deliberate. Lead single "Figure" is a delicate voice-and-guitar number that Stereogum compared to Mary Timony's early solo work after Helium. The newest songs point elsewhere: "I'm On Fire" is a triumphantly oblique rocker about feeling trapped in your own internal world, built on repetitive heaviness Elicson says she likes to get lost in, while "All Sound" is a playfully hazy quasi-instrumental, improvised guitar and wordless sighs, imperfections deliberately left in.

The press release cites John Cale, the Urinals, and Amen Dunes as inspirations, which tracks. This is dream-folk with a punk spine: songs that sound like they were recorded in one room because they were, and that carry their rough edges as proof of life rather than apology.

Listen

Open on Bandcamp

Stream the album on Bandcamp, starting with "I'm On Fire." That song also comes with a live video shot on a friend's cedar tree farm in New Jersey, directed and shot by Halle Ballard and Johnny Costa, with Elicson running loops and pedals outdoors as the sun set: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3mivlZ2oac. It is a good reminder that a solo set from her is not a quiet acoustic evening. It is one person operating a small machine orchestra.

Start here

  • "Figure" for the tender entry point, voice and guitar, nothing else needed.
  • "I'm On Fire" for the noisy-but-dreamy center of the record.
  • "All Sound" for the levity, the improvised guitar piece that breaks up the heavier moments.

River Of Fat runs nine tracks: "I'm On Fire," "A Warm Day In The Park," "Figure," "River Of Fat," "All Sound," "My War," "Flowers Smile," "Safe," and "CTW." Empath have not broken up, by the way. They toured earlier this year. This is a side door into the same restless Philadelphia scene, not an exit from it.

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