Back in April we covered a song by Leaky Engine, the solo project of Ezekiel J. Rudick. At the time we also mentioned that Rudick had a new record on the way with his band, Young Elk. The follow-up to 2016’s The Dark Side of the Holy Ghost, False Paradise promises to continue the Young Elk signature aesthetic—what their bio describes as “distant, somber, and oftentimes, crushingly bleak.”
As the title suggests, this is a record concerned with the empty promises of the contemporary existence, where the American Dream has been found out as no more than a compelling sales scam. Ruddick’s protagonists occupy a world where the foretold joys of love, intimacy, prosperity and religious salvation never come to pass, every inhabitant haunted by the lives they could have led, holding their stillborn dreams and refusing to let go.
Today we have the pleasure of unveiling the first single from the album. With a bleak yet textured tone, ‘Gossip Magazines’ is suitably morose, the reverb-heavy guitars and spacey synths strung along by the insistent percussion. There’s a sense of inevitability to the track’s motion that lends an existential edge, because for all of the haze and float of instrumentation the drums drag the song forward toward its fatal conclusion, and no amount of invention or protest can halt the slide.
Cos she read gossip magazines
and she ran barefoot in the street
with the Bible in one open hand
and a holy burningSo why are you sorry?
False Paradise will be released on June 15th on Holiday Breath Records.