Empath. Photo by Marie Lin.
Back in 2019, Philadelphia band Empath shared their debut album Active Listening: Night On Earth. The album title might suggest a three-hour ambient chillout odyssey, but the music was actually unpredictable noise-punk effective at provoking a mixture of intense and sometimes conflicting emotions. Today, they're back with a new song called "Born 100 Times," Empath's first song since 2019.
A song for surf-rocking on the edge of a black hole, "Born 100 Times" comes with a new music video featuring the band having a great time at a carnival. Read Empath bandleader Catherine Elicson's statement on the song and its visuals below, followed by the video itself.
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‘Born 100 Times’ is structurally very simple, consisting of a couple of hooks and a verse sung overtop of two repeated chords. I imagined a restructured pop song, having it start instantly with the hook and then eventually reaching a verse. While the lyrics are a somewhat spiritual reflection on devotion and power in one’s life, an isolating and very internal experience, the video offers a different viewpoint.
The video began as an idea [synthesizer player] Randall [Coon] had of us showing up with cameras at the New York State fair. There’s something beautiful and nostalgic about a fair we wanted to try and capture. Two friends, Halle Ballard and Johnny Costa, filmed us having real, uninhibited fun running around, eating fried food, absolutely dominating the carnival games, drinking countless wine slushies, getting spun around on rides, and just enjoying being together. It was a much needed night of leisure at the end of a long summer spent preparing for the next phase of Empath. The video is a document of this special moment in time for us. United together, we left behind the isolating, internal struggles of our lives and connected to the real world outside of ourselves.
