#253 parenthetical girls – evelyn mchale

Work (and non-work) has been driving me up the wall of late, but I get by with the help of strong, healthy doses of Parenthetical Girls. Their 2008 album Entanglements is one of my favorite things, and I always love how bandleader Zac Pennington is not afraid to revel in the group’s vault of orchestral influences, even if the elaborately arranged song suite may really annoy some. Their new Privilege, Pt. 1: On Deaths & Endearments EP is as enjoyable and boldly inventive as ever and “Evelyn McHale” – inspired by the young woman who jumped to her death from the Empire State Building in 1947, later to be immortalized as “the most beautiful suicide” in a Life magazine photograph – is a delirious piece of chamber pop, part shambolic Brill Building showpiece and part ode to misplaced martyrdom. Befitting its subject matter, the song’s atmosphere is one of sweet rapturous confusion, coiling in streams of unconsciousness as “those sickest insane thoughts” of Evelyn drift into silence. – keith.

mp3: parenthetical girls – evelyn mcHale

Buy Parenthetical Girls stuff at Slender Means Society.