*The Following Press Release Was Issued By fiftyCC*
CARDIOID IS ‘PERFECT ALONE’ IN ENDEARING, EMOTIONAL VIDEO – WITH PUPPETS
First music video from Portland-based artist’s Fantasy Metal EP
PORTLAND, OR — Cardioid is proud to unveil the poignant, delightfully unexpected music video for her song “Perfect Alone,” marking the first video release in the Fantasy Metal cycle.
Hot on the heels of her Fantasy Metal EP, which hit streaming platforms earlier last Fall, Portland-based musician Lizzy Ellison felt drawn to further flesh out the raw-nerve emotions and sense of emotional clarity she’d felt writing “Perfect Alone,” about putting the pieces of yourself back together after a breakup.
Collaborating with directors Derrick C. Brown and Stephen Lewis, Ellison expanded the track’s ethereal energy and heart-on-sleeve lyrics into a by-turns whimsical and wondrous exploration of the stages of loss we all endure while grieving a long-term relationship, from shock and sadness to apathy and eventually, hope. In typical Cardioid fashion, Ellison’s penchant for intermingling fantasy and reality are expressed here through the video’s protagonist, a forlorn puppet who feels he’s had his strings cut.
“The track is about what I imagined was going through his head,” she explains. “But in reality, this is what would go through my head.”
The “Perfect Alone” music video is available on YouTube, while Fantasy Metal is available digitally on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music and other major platforms.
Praise for Cardioid
“Excellent… Lizzy Ellison is back with a complex record, with sounds as varied as they are granite-solid: art-rock, indie, retrowave… Unified in ambition and talent. Rewarding.” —BeatToBe
“Infectiously propulsive… Opener “False Starts” touts an immense chorus, delivered in swells and showcasing a vocal range and delivery not dissimilar to La Force’s Ariel Engle or Mitski’s distorted warble. The lyrics, often wide-eyed, hopeful and grotesque (“Make me marathon to the theater in your bones” … “Harvest me, my love”) wouldn’t feel foreign in a Hop Along song — but Ellison wears her neuroses on her songs’ sleeves, in ways that are distinctly her own. Between the crystal ball synths of “Word Up” and the theatrical chaos of “The Time After This,” Cardioid absolutely has our attention with one of the best EPs of the year so far.” —Double Negative
“Fantasy Metal shines chrome in the sun and rolls through my mind smooth like polished old silverware. It feels like modernized vintage, an album made of found footage from an alternate dimension of ethereal beauty distorted, ever so slightly, by a few seconds stored in copper wires. I’m amazed by it.” —Emo Trash
“Ellison allows the delicate power of her vocals to carry [“False Starts”] with soaring elegance until transitioning the track into a bonafide indie pop hit.” —OPB Music
About Cardioid
The main creative project of Lizzy Ellison (previously of Portland’s Radiation City), Cardioid flits between genres and tones with the sly, dexterous abandon of an artist in full control. Evoking the distorted guitar ballads of Angel Olsen one minute and the funky, mercurial art-rock of St. Vincent the next, her music is tactile, industrial-strength dream-pop awash in fuzzed-out guitars and retrowave synths. Ellison terms it “fantasy metal,” silvery and elusive, resoundingly strong, yet invitingly fluid. Cardioid’s first full-length, 2017’s “Parts Dept.,” was a nine-track exploration of loss and longing Ellison now looks back on like an old diary. Her new and upcoming music is something else – coiled, wry, rhapsodic, sensual. “I’d love to someday make a record that’s not autobiographical,” maintains Ellison. “But I just can’t.” The music, instead, serves as a mirror to the restless, virtuosic mind of a woman only now reaching the peak of her sonic powers. Visit cardioidmusic.com and follow Cardioid on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
