About Ethan Gold
Looking for a new rabbit-hole to dive down? Try hanging out with the visionary, metamorphic spirit of Ethan Gold for a song or a season. The San Francisco-bred, Los Angeles-based global-citizen indie singer/songwriter/director/dharma-dream-scaper has probably experienced some level of heartbreak, joy, contemplation, or angst that you can relate to. And where many of us kick, scream, love, and stuff things down, Mr. Gold turns them into transformative artful expressions. Through personal loss, physical trauma, and both literally and metaphorically toxic living situations (see his Pitchfork and London Times touted, self-produced debut album Songs from a Toxic Apartment) he’s opened his heart through music, and transformed pain into perception.
Right now, Mr. Gold is launching his return to live performances, with solo shows through northern Europe centered around a trilogy of LPs that explore the experience of being a 21st century earthling. The singles featured below come from the first installment, Earth City 1: The Longing.
About the “Firefly” video
Rattling and strutting through “Firefly,” Gold has the perspective of a compassionate spectator to modern beauty standards and the culture built around them. Using his Zenmaster-knack for playing concept against concrete, he dresses the contradictory struggles for authenticity and attention by accenting buzzy rhythmic foundations with drawling lead lines and a meandering Spanish guitar solo. Musically and lyrically, it’s the whole scene of fall-in-line, be original, rationalize, cry—shoot for the stars and end up just another firefly.
New York video director BriAnna Olson accentuates Gold’s message with a collage of macro and micro experiences within beauty culture. Grainy and dreamlike, we walk with women and girls of all ages as they experiment their way through pageants, magazines, and make-up counters. The lyric video is a dynamic meditation allowing us ample space to contemplate a subtle, problematic symptom of our evolving modern times.
