Blonde Redhead with Nation of Language
Blonde Redhead
https://blonde-redhead.com
Moving from Sonic Youth-like art punk to eclectic pop over the course of their decades-long career, Blonde Redhead remained one of indie rock's most creative acts. The band formed in 1993 after Japanese art students Kazu Makino and Maki Takahashi randomly met Italian twin brothers Simone and Amedeo Pace at an Italian restaurant in New York. (The name was taken from a song by the '80s no wave band DNA.) With Makino and Amedeo on guitars and vocals, Simone on drums, and Takahashi on bass, the band's chaotic, artistic rock caught the attention of Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley, who produced and released the band's debut album, Blonde Redhead, on his Smells Like Records label. Shortly after the album's release, Takahashi left the band. The remaining members continued as a trio, releasing a second album, La Mia Vita Violenta, on Shelley's label in 1995.
For their 1997 release, Fake Can Be Just as Good, recorded for Touch & Go, the trio was joined by guest bass player Vern Rumsey from Unwound. By 1998, the band eliminated bass and scaled back to guitars, drums, and vocals for In an Expression of the Inexpressible. Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons and the Melodie Citronique EP followed two years later. The band's first for 4AD, Misery Is a Butterfly, was released in spring 2004. For 2007's 23, the group opted for a mix of dream pop and delicate electronic textures. Three years later, Blonde Redhead delivered Penny Sparkle, a more stripped-down, even more electronic-leaning set of songs the band recorded in New York and Stockholm with Alan Moulder, Van Rivers, and the Subliminal Kid. In 2014, Blonde Redhead returned with Barragán, featuring production from Drew Brown (Beck, Stephen Malkmus, Radiohead).
The band revisited its early days in 2016 with the Numero Group box set Masculin Feminin, which collected Blonde Redhead and La Mia Via Violenta along with demos, singles, and radio performances from that era. That year also saw the release of Freedom of Expression on Barragán Hard, a collection of Barragán remixes including contributions by Deerhoof, Van Rivers, Nosaj Thing, and Connan Mockasin. Blonde Redhead returned with new music in 2017 in the shape of the EP '3 O'Clock', which they released on their own Asa Wa Kuru Records.
Nation of Language
https://www.nationoflanguage.com
Four years on from the release of their unexpectedly self-assured debut album, NYC based Nation of Language have attracted a rapidly growing international audience via their danceable and impassioned take on new wave, post-punk & shoegaze genres. Following the critical acclaim of their their first LP Introduction, Presence, its 2021 follow-up A Way Forward pushed them to a wider audience -- landing them their late-night TV debut on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and a string of sold out tours -- and their 2023 record Strange Disciple has continued this momentum, landing Rough Trade's coveted #1 album of the year spot. Now a mainstay atop lists of the best live acts of recent years, the band continue to charge synth-first into their latest chapter as a major festival draw at recent iterations of Austin City Limits Festival, Desert Daze, Pitchfork Festival, Primavera Sound, Corona Capital, Outside Lands, Bonnaroo and many others.
~~~~~~~~~~
More about Blonde Redhead
"Life changes fast," Joan Didion once wrote. "Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends."
In the spring of 2020, Blonde Redhead singer and multi-instrumentalist Kazu Makino encountered this passage from Didion's 2005 memoir of grief, The Year of Magical Thinking, in which the author reflected on the devastating experience of witnessing her husband's sudden death at the dinner table. Amid the profound uncertainty of those early pandemic months, Makino was thinking of her own parents far away in Japan; the then-lost ritual of congregating for dinner with family; and the heavy, omnipresent feeling that life could change in the instant for any of us.
With plainspoken language and incandescent melodies, Makino narrated these feelings on a pair of songs, "Sit Down for Dinner Pt I" and "Sit Down for Dinner Pt II," which helped title the tenth full-length from Blonde Redhead. "Sit Down to Dinner Pt II" thematically transcends time: "It's sort of about death, but the music is so alive and groovy," Makino says. Yet, the title Sit Down for Dinner has a separate resonance for the Italian members of Blonde Redhead, the Milan-born twin brothers Amedeo Pace (singer / multi-instrumentalist) and Simone Pace (drummer). "Culturally, dinner is important to us," Simone says of the nonnegotiable family ritual. "It's a moment for us to sit down and have time with each other. We grew up that way. I know a lot of people eat and run, eat in front of their TV, or don't care about it too much--and that's OK--but we really do." Dinner has long been a sacred ritual for Blonde Redhead as a band as well; when they're on tour or rehearsing, they always share a meal, no matter what.
Owing to that sense of persistent togetherness, the immersive, meticulously-crafted Sit Down for Dinner is a testament to the unique internal logic Blonde Redhead have refined over their three-decade existence. Formed in the 1993 New York indie underground, Blonde Redhead quickly found a place on Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley's label, Smells Like, before releasing beloved records on Touch & Go and 4AD that traced an arc from angular indie-rock to cosmopolitan art pop. The trio might have been a quintessential '90s band, if not for the fact that they continuously kept going, growing, never confined to any era but the present.
On Sit Down for Dinner, the understated yet visceral melodies charging each song create a foil to lyrics about the inescapable struggles of adulthood: communication breakdown in enduring relationships, wondering which way to turn, holding onto your dreams. Going into the record, Makino had recently spent time living on a tiny Italian island and pursuing solo music--an experience that instilled in her new confidence to experiment and have fun. She returned to New York as the world was locking down, quarantining with Amedeo and his partner upstate, where they focused on the music in seclusion. Immaculately structured, imbued with sensitivity, clarity, and resolve, Sit Down for Dinner was ultimately written and recorded over a five-year period spanning New York City, upstate, Milan and Tuscany.
The luminous groove and chord progression of "Snowman," sung by Amedeo, is one of many Blonde Redhead songs inspired by the attitude and breeziness of Brazilian experimental music; a brilliant turn of phrase melts its titular snowman into simply a man, struggling to express himself: "Do you feel alive or do you only fall? So like a no man, that you are." Makino wrote "Rest of Her Life" as an elegy for her cherished late horse, Harry, who she considered "almost like my soulmate" (and whose loss in 2020 moved her to read The Year of Magical Thinking). The song's vocal layers were inspired by the Swingle Singers' a capella renditions of Bach.
The subtly brooding "If" embodies the existential unease of middle age, struggling to orient oneself and locate where, and who, are home. The widescreen introspection of "I Thought You Should Know" confronts the experience of being misunderstood, or unheard, by those closest to you. On "Kiss Her Kiss Her," when Makino sings, "Even stars are closer," the lyric references a short story in Khul-Khaal, by the Arabic writer Nayra Atiya, in which a woman hopes to divorce her husband, and is told "even the stars are closer" than such a possibility. "It's about someone with a bold, entirely far-fetched dream, where you know it will end in tears, but you want to be supportive anyway."
Elsewhere, the songs of Sit Down for Dinner find ways forward in pure experimentation. "Melody Experiment" received its title when Makino "unlocked the song with the melody" in a moment of serendipity. "I was singing a little bit off, in a bluesy way, and I was so fascinated," she says. "It feels quite new, like something I haven't done before." With its stacked backing vocals, "Before" was written with children's voices in mind, narrated from the perspective of a kid who thinks they know it all. "Children have incredible abilities," Makino says. "They have a confidence that is so whole, they can see through you a little." Amid the windswept melodies and arrestingly bittersweet tone of "Not for Me," Amedeo gave himself the challenge of vulnerability, writing while Makino was in Italy, longing for that kind of freedom. "You ran with the flowers/And further than water/And further than our walls," he sings. "Move to the side, move to the light, move to a place that no one can find."
Releasing Sit Down for Dinner in its 30th year, Blonde Redhead's perseverance partially came in realizing that the process of making the record should necessarily be fun. "Usually I agonize and it's painful for me to write music, but on this one, I didn't suffer as much," says Makino. "I wanted to put my foot down and say: we can have a nice time together. The record sounds quite optimistic." Amedeo adds, "We do really respond to each other. We depend on each other for inspiration. Kazu completes what I start; Simone completes both with rhythm."
Perhaps this gives the title Sit Down for Dinner yet another layer, as the music, fittingly, is a pleasure, with the ease of new conversation among familiar friends. Crucial to that equation are Blonde Redhead's innate harmonic sensibilities, which Makino calls the core of the band. "We have a language we have kept," she adds. "We try to change rhythms, concepts, and sounds. But that harmonic sensibility has stayed the same. It hits the same part of your heart."
~~~~~~~~~
Blonde Redhead is an alternative rock or indie rock band. It was formed by Kazu Makino, Maki Takahashi and Italian twin brothers Simone and Amedeo Pace. They take their name from a song by DNA, a 70's and 80's no wave band from New York. Kazu Makino is married to Amedeo Pace.
Amedeo and Simone Pace were born in Milan and grew up in Montreal, but moved later on to Boston to study jazz. After earning their Bachelor's degrees, they began playing in the New York City underground music scene. The Pace brothers and Kazu Makino and Maki Takahashi - Japanese art students - formed the band in 1993 after a chance meeting at an Italian restaurant in New York.
Blonde Redhead caught the attention of Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley, who produced their self-titled debut in 1993. Shortly afterwards, Maki Takahashi left the band, and the remaining band members continued as a trio. On their third album, Fake Can Be Just as Good, they were joined by Vern Rumsey of Unwound as a guest bassist. After this, they continued without a bass player for the release of the remainder of their albums. On their fourth album, In an Expression of the Inexpressible, Guy Picciotto of Fugazi was hired as producer, as well as contributing to / singing on the song "Futurism vs. Passeism Part 2". Guy Picciotto also produced their records, Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons and Misery Is a Butterfly. Alan Moulder (Nine Inch Nails, U2, Smashing Pumpkins) produced their most recent record, 23.
---------
Blonde Redhead has always been a band that innovates with each album. They challenge themselves with each recording situation, and the results have been stunning every time. Their music is always inspired by the same emotions, but their tastes and ways they choose to execute those emotions are constantly evolving. It was the early conversations about how to make this record that led the band to work with the up and coming Swedish duo Van Rivers and The Subliminal Kid (Henrik von Sivers and Peder Mannerfelt) as producers on the record. Drew Brown (Radiohead, Beck) also came on board to record the tracks that would eventually be used in Stockholm.
show less
Blonde Redhead
https://blonde-redhead.com
Moving from Sonic Youth-like art punk to eclectic pop over the course of their decades-long career, Blonde Redhead remained one of indie rock's most creative acts. The band formed in 1993 after Japanese art students Kazu Makino and Maki Takahashi randomly met Italian twin brothers Simone and Amedeo Pace at an Italian restaurant in New York. (The name was taken from a song by the '80s no wave band DNA.) With Makino and Amedeo on guitars and vocals, Simone on drums, and Takahashi on bass, the band's chaotic, artistic rock caught the attention of Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley, who produced and released the band's debut album, Blonde Redhead, on his Smells Like Records label. Shortly after the album's release, Takahashi left the band. The remaining members continued as a trio, releasing a second album, La Mia Vita Violenta, on Shelley's label in 1995.
For their 1997 release, Fake Can Be Just as Good, recorded for Touch & Go, the trio was joined by guest bass player Vern Rumsey from Unwound. By 1998, the band eliminated bass and scaled back to guitars, drums, and vocals for In an Expression of the Inexpressible. Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons and the Melodie Citronique EP followed two years later. The band's first for 4AD, Misery Is a Butterfly, was released in spring 2004. For 2007's 23, the group opted for a mix of dream pop and delicate electronic textures. Three years later, Blonde Redhead delivered Penny Sparkle, a more stripped-down, even more electronic-leaning set of songs the band recorded in New York and Stockholm with Alan Moulder, Van Rivers, and the Subliminal Kid. In 2014, Blonde Redhead returned with Barragán, featuring production from Drew Brown (Beck, Stephen Malkmus, Radiohead).
The band revisited its early days in 2016 with the Numero Group box set Masculin Feminin, which collected Blonde Redhead and La Mia Via Violenta along with demos, singles, and radio performances from that era. That year also saw the release of Freedom of Expression on Barragán Hard, a collection of Barragán remixes including contributions by Deerhoof, Van Rivers, Nosaj Thing, and Connan Mockasin. Blonde Redhead returned with new music in 2017 in the shape of the EP '3 O'Clock', which they released on their own Asa Wa Kuru Records.
Nation of Language
https://www.nationoflanguage.com
Four years on from the release of their unexpectedly self-assured debut album, NYC based Nation of Language have attracted a rapidly growing international audience via their danceable and impassioned take on new wave, post-punk & shoegaze genres. Following the critical acclaim of their their first LP Introduction, Presence, its 2021 follow-up A Way Forward pushed them to a wider audience -- landing them their late-night TV debut on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and a string of sold out tours -- and their 2023 record Strange Disciple has continued this momentum, landing Rough Trade's coveted #1 album of the year spot. Now a mainstay atop lists of the best live acts of recent years, the band continue to charge synth-first into their latest chapter as a major festival draw at recent iterations of Austin City Limits Festival, Desert Daze, Pitchfork Festival, Primavera Sound, Corona Capital, Outside Lands, Bonnaroo and many others.
~~~~~~~~~~
More about Blonde Redhead
"Life changes fast," Joan Didion once wrote. "Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends."
In the spring of 2020, Blonde Redhead singer and multi-instrumentalist Kazu Makino encountered this passage from Didion's 2005 memoir of grief, The Year of Magical Thinking, in which the author reflected on the devastating experience of witnessing her husband's sudden death at the dinner table. Amid the profound uncertainty of those early pandemic months, Makino was thinking of her own parents far away in Japan; the then-lost ritual of congregating for dinner with family; and the heavy, omnipresent feeling that life could change in the instant for any of us.
With plainspoken language and incandescent melodies, Makino narrated these feelings on a pair of songs, "Sit Down for Dinner Pt I" and "Sit Down for Dinner Pt II," which helped title the tenth full-length from Blonde Redhead. "Sit Down to Dinner Pt II" thematically transcends time: "It's sort of about death, but the music is so alive and groovy," Makino says. Yet, the title Sit Down for Dinner has a separate resonance for the Italian members of Blonde Redhead, the Milan-born twin brothers Amedeo Pace (singer / multi-instrumentalist) and Simone Pace (drummer). "Culturally, dinner is important to us," Simone says of the nonnegotiable family ritual. "It's a moment for us to sit down and have time with each other. We grew up that way. I know a lot of people eat and run, eat in front of their TV, or don't care about it too much--and that's OK--but we really do." Dinner has long been a sacred ritual for Blonde Redhead as a band as well; when they're on tour or rehearsing, they always share a meal, no matter what.
Owing to that sense of persistent togetherness, the immersive, meticulously-crafted Sit Down for Dinner is a testament to the unique internal logic Blonde Redhead have refined over their three-decade existence. Formed in the 1993 New York indie underground, Blonde Redhead quickly found a place on Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley's label, Smells Like, before releasing beloved records on Touch & Go and 4AD that traced an arc from angular indie-rock to cosmopolitan art pop. The trio might have been a quintessential '90s band, if not for the fact that they continuously kept going, growing, never confined to any era but the present.
On Sit Down for Dinner, the understated yet visceral melodies charging each song create a foil to lyrics about the inescapable struggles of adulthood: communication breakdown in enduring relationships, wondering which way to turn, holding onto your dreams. Going into the record, Makino had recently spent time living on a tiny Italian island and pursuing solo music--an experience that instilled in her new confidence to experiment and have fun. She returned to New York as the world was locking down, quarantining with Amedeo and his partner upstate, where they focused on the music in seclusion. Immaculately structured, imbued with sensitivity, clarity, and resolve, Sit Down for Dinner was ultimately written and recorded over a five-year period spanning New York City, upstate, Milan and Tuscany.
The luminous groove and chord progression of "Snowman," sung by Amedeo, is one of many Blonde Redhead songs inspired by the attitude and breeziness of Brazilian experimental music; a brilliant turn of phrase melts its titular snowman into simply a man, struggling to express himself: "Do you feel alive or do you only fall? So like a no man, that you are." Makino wrote "Rest of Her Life" as an elegy for her cherished late horse, Harry, who she considered "almost like my soulmate" (and whose loss in 2020 moved her to read The Year of Magical Thinking). The song's vocal layers were inspired by the Swingle Singers' a capella renditions of Bach.
The subtly brooding "If" embodies the existential unease of middle age, struggling to orient oneself and locate where, and who, are home. The widescreen introspection of "I Thought You Should Know" confronts the experience of being misunderstood, or unheard, by those closest to you. On "Kiss Her Kiss Her," when Makino sings, "Even stars are closer," the lyric references a short story in Khul-Khaal, by the Arabic writer Nayra Atiya, in which a woman hopes to divorce her husband, and is told "even the stars are closer" than such a possibility. "It's about someone with a bold, entirely far-fetched dream, where you know it will end in tears, but you want to be supportive anyway."
Elsewhere, the songs of Sit Down for Dinner find ways forward in pure experimentation. "Melody Experiment" received its title when Makino "unlocked the song with the melody" in a moment of serendipity. "I was singing a little bit off, in a bluesy way, and I was so fascinated," she says. "It feels quite new, like something I haven't done before." With its stacked backing vocals, "Before" was written with children's voices in mind, narrated from the perspective of a kid who thinks they know it all. "Children have incredible abilities," Makino says. "They have a confidence that is so whole, they can see through you a little." Amid the windswept melodies and arrestingly bittersweet tone of "Not for Me," Amedeo gave himself the challenge of vulnerability, writing while Makino was in Italy, longing for that kind of freedom. "You ran with the flowers/And further than water/And further than our walls," he sings. "Move to the side, move to the light, move to a place that no one can find."
Releasing Sit Down for Dinner in its 30th year, Blonde Redhead's perseverance partially came in realizing that the process of making the record should necessarily be fun. "Usually I agonize and it's painful for me to write music, but on this one, I didn't suffer as much," says Makino. "I wanted to put my foot down and say: we can have a nice time together. The record sounds quite optimistic." Amedeo adds, "We do really respond to each other. We depend on each other for inspiration. Kazu completes what I start; Simone completes both with rhythm."
Perhaps this gives the title Sit Down for Dinner yet another layer, as the music, fittingly, is a pleasure, with the ease of new conversation among familiar friends. Crucial to that equation are Blonde Redhead's innate harmonic sensibilities, which Makino calls the core of the band. "We have a language we have kept," she adds. "We try to change rhythms, concepts, and sounds. But that harmonic sensibility has stayed the same. It hits the same part of your heart."
~~~~~~~~~
Blonde Redhead is an alternative rock or indie rock band. It was formed by Kazu Makino, Maki Takahashi and Italian twin brothers Simone and Amedeo Pace. They take their name from a song by DNA, a 70's and 80's no wave band from New York. Kazu Makino is married to Amedeo Pace.
Amedeo and Simone Pace were born in Milan and grew up in Montreal, but moved later on to Boston to study jazz. After earning their Bachelor's degrees, they began playing in the New York City underground music scene. The Pace brothers and Kazu Makino and Maki Takahashi - Japanese art students - formed the band in 1993 after a chance meeting at an Italian restaurant in New York.
Blonde Redhead caught the attention of Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley, who produced their self-titled debut in 1993. Shortly afterwards, Maki Takahashi left the band, and the remaining band members continued as a trio. On their third album, Fake Can Be Just as Good, they were joined by Vern Rumsey of Unwound as a guest bassist. After this, they continued without a bass player for the release of the remainder of their albums. On their fourth album, In an Expression of the Inexpressible, Guy Picciotto of Fugazi was hired as producer, as well as contributing to / singing on the song "Futurism vs. Passeism Part 2". Guy Picciotto also produced their records, Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons and Misery Is a Butterfly. Alan Moulder (Nine Inch Nails, U2, Smashing Pumpkins) produced their most recent record, 23.
---------
Blonde Redhead has always been a band that innovates with each album. They challenge themselves with each recording situation, and the results have been stunning every time. Their music is always inspired by the same emotions, but their tastes and ways they choose to execute those emotions are constantly evolving. It was the early conversations about how to make this record that led the band to work with the up and coming Swedish duo Van Rivers and The Subliminal Kid (Henrik von Sivers and Peder Mannerfelt) as producers on the record. Drew Brown (Radiohead, Beck) also came on board to record the tracks that would eventually be used in Stockholm.
Blonde Redhead with Nation of Language
Blonde Redhead
https://blonde-redhead.com
Moving from Sonic Youth-like art punk to eclectic pop over the course of their decades-long career, Blonde Redhead remained one of indie rock's most creative acts. The band formed in 1993 after Japanese art students Kazu Makino and Maki Takahashi randomly met Italian twin brothers Simone and Amedeo Pace at an Italian restaurant in New York. (The name was taken from a song by the '80s no wave band DNA.) With Makino and Amedeo on guitars and vocals, Simone on drums, and Takahashi on bass, the band's chaotic, artistic rock caught the attention of Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley, who produced and released the band's debut album, Blonde Redhead, on his Smells Like Records label. Shortly after the album's release, Takahashi left the band. The remaining members continued as a trio, releasing a second album, La Mia Vita Violenta, on Shelley's label in 1995.
For their 1997 release, Fake Can Be Just as Good, recorded for Touch & Go, the trio was joined by guest bass player Vern Rumsey from Unwound. By 1998, the band eliminated bass and scaled back to guitars, drums, and vocals for In an Expression of the Inexpressible. Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons and the Melodie Citronique EP followed two years later. The band's first for 4AD, Misery Is a Butterfly, was released in spring 2004. For 2007's 23, the group opted for a mix of dream pop and delicate electronic textures. Three years later, Blonde Redhead delivered Penny Sparkle, a more stripped-down, even more electronic-leaning set of songs the band recorded in New York and Stockholm with Alan Moulder, Van Rivers, and the Subliminal Kid. In 2014, Blonde Redhead returned with Barragán, featuring production from Drew Brown (Beck, Stephen Malkmus, Radiohead).
The band revisited its early days in 2016 with the Numero Group box set Masculin Feminin, which collected Blonde Redhead and La Mia Via Violenta along with demos, singles, and radio performances from that era. That year also saw the release of Freedom of Expression on Barragán Hard, a collection of Barragán remixes including contributions by Deerhoof, Van Rivers, Nosaj Thing, and Connan Mockasin. Blonde Redhead returned with new music in 2017 in the shape of the EP '3 O'Clock', which they released on their own Asa Wa Kuru Records.
Nation of Language
https://www.nationoflanguage.com
Four years on from the release of their unexpectedly self-assured debut album, NYC based Nation of Language have attracted a rapidly growing international audience via their danceable and impassioned take on new wave, post-punk & shoegaze genres. Following the critical acclaim of their their first LP Introduction, Presence, its 2021 follow-up A Way Forward pushed them to a wider audience -- landing them their late-night TV debut on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and a string of sold out tours -- and their 2023 record Strange Disciple has continued this momentum, landing Rough Trade's coveted #1 album of the year spot. Now a mainstay atop lists of the best live acts of recent years, the band continue to charge synth-first into their latest chapter as a major festival draw at recent iterations of Austin City Limits Festival, Desert Daze, Pitchfork Festival, Primavera Sound, Corona Capital, Outside Lands, Bonnaroo and many others.
~~~~~~~~~~
More about Blonde Redhead
"Life changes fast," Joan Didion once wrote. "Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends."
In the spring of 2020, Blonde Redhead singer and multi-instrumentalist Kazu Makino encountered this passage from Didion's 2005 memoir of grief, The Year of Magical Thinking, in which the author reflected on the devastating experience of witnessing her husband's sudden death at the dinner table. Amid the profound uncertainty of those early pandemic months, Makino was thinking of her own parents far away in Japan; the then-lost ritual of congregating for dinner with family; and the heavy, omnipresent feeling that life could change in the instant for any of us.
With plainspoken language and incandescent melodies, Makino narrated these feelings on a pair of songs, "Sit Down for Dinner Pt I" and "Sit Down for Dinner Pt II," which helped title the tenth full-length from Blonde Redhead. "Sit Down to Dinner Pt II" thematically transcends time: "It's sort of about death, but the music is so alive and groovy," Makino says. Yet, the title Sit Down for Dinner has a separate resonance for the Italian members of Blonde Redhead, the Milan-born twin brothers Amedeo Pace (singer / multi-instrumentalist) and Simone Pace (drummer). "Culturally, dinner is important to us," Simone says of the nonnegotiable family ritual. "It's a moment for us to sit down and have time with each other. We grew up that way. I know a lot of people eat and run, eat in front of their TV, or don't care about it too much--and that's OK--but we really do." Dinner has long been a sacred ritual for Blonde Redhead as a band as well; when they're on tour or rehearsing, they always share a meal, no matter what.
Owing to that sense of persistent togetherness, the immersive, meticulously-crafted Sit Down for Dinner is a testament to the unique internal logic Blonde Redhead have refined over their three-decade existence. Formed in the 1993 New York indie underground, Blonde Redhead quickly found a place on Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley's label, Smells Like, before releasing beloved records on Touch & Go and 4AD that traced an arc from angular indie-rock to cosmopolitan art pop. The trio might have been a quintessential '90s band, if not for the fact that they continuously kept going, growing, never confined to any era but the present.
On Sit Down for Dinner, the understated yet visceral melodies charging each song create a foil to lyrics about the inescapable struggles of adulthood: communication breakdown in enduring relationships, wondering which way to turn, holding onto your dreams. Going into the record, Makino had recently spent time living on a tiny Italian island and pursuing solo music--an experience that instilled in her new confidence to experiment and have fun. She returned to New York as the world was locking down, quarantining with Amedeo and his partner upstate, where they focused on the music in seclusion. Immaculately structured, imbued with sensitivity, clarity, and resolve, Sit Down for Dinner was ultimately written and recorded over a five-year period spanning New York City, upstate, Milan and Tuscany.
The luminous groove and chord progression of "Snowman," sung by Amedeo, is one of many Blonde Redhead songs inspired by the attitude and breeziness of Brazilian experimental music; a brilliant turn of phrase melts its titular snowman into simply a man, struggling to express himself: "Do you feel alive or do you only fall? So like a no man, that you are." Makino wrote "Rest of Her Life" as an elegy for her cherished late horse, Harry, who she considered "almost like my soulmate" (and whose loss in 2020 moved her to read The Year of Magical Thinking). The song's vocal layers were inspired by the Swingle Singers' a capella renditions of Bach.
The subtly brooding "If" embodies the existential unease of middle age, struggling to orient oneself and locate where, and who, are home. The widescreen introspection of "I Thought You Should Know" confronts the experience of being misunderstood, or unheard, by those closest to you. On "Kiss Her Kiss Her," when Makino sings, "Even stars are closer," the lyric references a short story in Khul-Khaal, by the Arabic writer Nayra Atiya, in which a woman hopes to divorce her husband, and is told "even the stars are closer" than such a possibility. "It's about someone with a bold, entirely far-fetched dream, where you know it will end in tears, but you want to be supportive anyway."
Elsewhere, the songs of Sit Down for Dinner find ways forward in pure experimentation. "Melody Experiment" received its title when Makino "unlocked the song with the melody" in a moment of serendipity. "I was singing a little bit off, in a bluesy way, and I was so fascinated," she says. "It feels quite new, like something I haven't done before." With its stacked backing vocals, "Before" was written with children's voices in mind, narrated from the perspective of a kid who thinks they know it all. "Children have incredible abilities," Makino says. "They have a confidence that is so whole, they can see through you a little." Amid the windswept melodies and arrestingly bittersweet tone of "Not for Me," Amedeo gave himself the challenge of vulnerability, writing while Makino was in Italy, longing for that kind of freedom. "You ran with the flowers/And further than water/And further than our walls," he sings. "Move to the side, move to the light, move to a place that no one can find."
Releasing Sit Down for Dinner in its 30th year, Blonde Redhead's perseverance partially came in realizing that the process of making the record should necessarily be fun. "Usually I agonize and it's painful for me to write music, but on this one, I didn't suffer as much," says Makino. "I wanted to put my foot down and say: we can have a nice time together. The record sounds quite optimistic." Amedeo adds, "We do really respond to each other. We depend on each other for inspiration. Kazu completes what I start; Simone completes both with rhythm."
Perhaps this gives the title Sit Down for Dinner yet another layer, as the music, fittingly, is a pleasure, with the ease of new conversation among familiar friends. Crucial to that equation are Blonde Redhead's innate harmonic sensibilities, which Makino calls the core of the band. "We have a language we have kept," she adds. "We try to change rhythms, concepts, and sounds. But that harmonic sensibility has stayed the same. It hits the same part of your heart."
~~~~~~~~~
Blonde Redhead is an alternative rock or indie rock band. It was formed by Kazu Makino, Maki Takahashi and Italian twin brothers Simone and Amedeo Pace. They take their name from a song by DNA, a 70's and 80's no wave band from New York. Kazu Makino is married to Amedeo Pace.
Amedeo and Simone Pace were born in Milan and grew up in Montreal, but moved later on to Boston to study jazz. After earning their Bachelor's degrees, they began playing in the New York City underground music scene. The Pace brothers and Kazu Makino and Maki Takahashi - Japanese art students - formed the band in 1993 after a chance meeting at an Italian restaurant in New York.
Blonde Redhead caught the attention of Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley, who produced their self-titled debut in 1993. Shortly afterwards, Maki Takahashi left the band, and the remaining band members continued as a trio. On their third album, Fake Can Be Just as Good, they were joined by Vern Rumsey of Unwound as a guest bassist. After this, they continued without a bass player for the release of the remainder of their albums. On their fourth album, In an Expression of the Inexpressible, Guy Picciotto of Fugazi was hired as producer, as well as contributing to / singing on the song "Futurism vs. Passeism Part 2". Guy Picciotto also produced their records, Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons and Misery Is a Butterfly. Alan Moulder (Nine Inch Nails, U2, Smashing Pumpkins) produced their most recent record, 23.
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Blonde Redhead has always been a band that innovates with each album. They challenge themselves with each recording situation, and the results have been stunning every time. Their music is always inspired by the same emotions, but their tastes and ways they choose to execute those emotions are constantly evolving. It was the early conversations about how to make this record that led the band to work with the up and coming Swedish duo Van Rivers and The Subliminal Kid (Henrik von Sivers and Peder Mannerfelt) as producers on the record. Drew Brown (Radiohead, Beck) also came on board to record the tracks that would eventually be used in Stockholm.
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Blonde Redhead
https://blonde-redhead.com
Moving from Sonic Youth-like art punk to eclectic pop over the course of their decades-long career, Blonde Redhead remained one of indie rock's most creative acts. The band formed in 1993 after Japanese art students Kazu Makino and Maki Takahashi randomly met Italian twin brothers Simone and Amedeo Pace at an Italian restaurant in New York. (The name was taken from a song by the '80s no wave band DNA.) With Makino and Amedeo on guitars and vocals, Simone on drums, and Takahashi on bass, the band's chaotic, artistic rock caught the attention of Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley, who produced and released the band's debut album, Blonde Redhead, on his Smells Like Records label. Shortly after the album's release, Takahashi left the band. The remaining members continued as a trio, releasing a second album, La Mia Vita Violenta, on Shelley's label in 1995.
For their 1997 release, Fake Can Be Just as Good, recorded for Touch & Go, the trio was joined by guest bass player Vern Rumsey from Unwound. By 1998, the band eliminated bass and scaled back to guitars, drums, and vocals for In an Expression of the Inexpressible. Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons and the Melodie Citronique EP followed two years later. The band's first for 4AD, Misery Is a Butterfly, was released in spring 2004. For 2007's 23, the group opted for a mix of dream pop and delicate electronic textures. Three years later, Blonde Redhead delivered Penny Sparkle, a more stripped-down, even more electronic-leaning set of songs the band recorded in New York and Stockholm with Alan Moulder, Van Rivers, and the Subliminal Kid. In 2014, Blonde Redhead returned with Barragán, featuring production from Drew Brown (Beck, Stephen Malkmus, Radiohead).
The band revisited its early days in 2016 with the Numero Group box set Masculin Feminin, which collected Blonde Redhead and La Mia Via Violenta along with demos, singles, and radio performances from that era. That year also saw the release of Freedom of Expression on Barragán Hard, a collection of Barragán remixes including contributions by Deerhoof, Van Rivers, Nosaj Thing, and Connan Mockasin. Blonde Redhead returned with new music in 2017 in the shape of the EP '3 O'Clock', which they released on their own Asa Wa Kuru Records.
Nation of Language
https://www.nationoflanguage.com
Four years on from the release of their unexpectedly self-assured debut album, NYC based Nation of Language have attracted a rapidly growing international audience via their danceable and impassioned take on new wave, post-punk & shoegaze genres. Following the critical acclaim of their their first LP Introduction, Presence, its 2021 follow-up A Way Forward pushed them to a wider audience -- landing them their late-night TV debut on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and a string of sold out tours -- and their 2023 record Strange Disciple has continued this momentum, landing Rough Trade's coveted #1 album of the year spot. Now a mainstay atop lists of the best live acts of recent years, the band continue to charge synth-first into their latest chapter as a major festival draw at recent iterations of Austin City Limits Festival, Desert Daze, Pitchfork Festival, Primavera Sound, Corona Capital, Outside Lands, Bonnaroo and many others.
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More about Blonde Redhead
"Life changes fast," Joan Didion once wrote. "Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends."
In the spring of 2020, Blonde Redhead singer and multi-instrumentalist Kazu Makino encountered this passage from Didion's 2005 memoir of grief, The Year of Magical Thinking, in which the author reflected on the devastating experience of witnessing her husband's sudden death at the dinner table. Amid the profound uncertainty of those early pandemic months, Makino was thinking of her own parents far away in Japan; the then-lost ritual of congregating for dinner with family; and the heavy, omnipresent feeling that life could change in the instant for any of us.
With plainspoken language and incandescent melodies, Makino narrated these feelings on a pair of songs, "Sit Down for Dinner Pt I" and "Sit Down for Dinner Pt II," which helped title the tenth full-length from Blonde Redhead. "Sit Down to Dinner Pt II" thematically transcends time: "It's sort of about death, but the music is so alive and groovy," Makino says. Yet, the title Sit Down for Dinner has a separate resonance for the Italian members of Blonde Redhead, the Milan-born twin brothers Amedeo Pace (singer / multi-instrumentalist) and Simone Pace (drummer). "Culturally, dinner is important to us," Simone says of the nonnegotiable family ritual. "It's a moment for us to sit down and have time with each other. We grew up that way. I know a lot of people eat and run, eat in front of their TV, or don't care about it too much--and that's OK--but we really do." Dinner has long been a sacred ritual for Blonde Redhead as a band as well; when they're on tour or rehearsing, they always share a meal, no matter what.
Owing to that sense of persistent togetherness, the immersive, meticulously-crafted Sit Down for Dinner is a testament to the unique internal logic Blonde Redhead have refined over their three-decade existence. Formed in the 1993 New York indie underground, Blonde Redhead quickly found a place on Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley's label, Smells Like, before releasing beloved records on Touch & Go and 4AD that traced an arc from angular indie-rock to cosmopolitan art pop. The trio might have been a quintessential '90s band, if not for the fact that they continuously kept going, growing, never confined to any era but the present.
On Sit Down for Dinner, the understated yet visceral melodies charging each song create a foil to lyrics about the inescapable struggles of adulthood: communication breakdown in enduring relationships, wondering which way to turn, holding onto your dreams. Going into the record, Makino had recently spent time living on a tiny Italian island and pursuing solo music--an experience that instilled in her new confidence to experiment and have fun. She returned to New York as the world was locking down, quarantining with Amedeo and his partner upstate, where they focused on the music in seclusion. Immaculately structured, imbued with sensitivity, clarity, and resolve, Sit Down for Dinner was ultimately written and recorded over a five-year period spanning New York City, upstate, Milan and Tuscany.
The luminous groove and chord progression of "Snowman," sung by Amedeo, is one of many Blonde Redhead songs inspired by the attitude and breeziness of Brazilian experimental music; a brilliant turn of phrase melts its titular snowman into simply a man, struggling to express himself: "Do you feel alive or do you only fall? So like a no man, that you are." Makino wrote "Rest of Her Life" as an elegy for her cherished late horse, Harry, who she considered "almost like my soulmate" (and whose loss in 2020 moved her to read The Year of Magical Thinking). The song's vocal layers were inspired by the Swingle Singers' a capella renditions of Bach.
The subtly brooding "If" embodies the existential unease of middle age, struggling to orient oneself and locate where, and who, are home. The widescreen introspection of "I Thought You Should Know" confronts the experience of being misunderstood, or unheard, by those closest to you. On "Kiss Her Kiss Her," when Makino sings, "Even stars are closer," the lyric references a short story in Khul-Khaal, by the Arabic writer Nayra Atiya, in which a woman hopes to divorce her husband, and is told "even the stars are closer" than such a possibility. "It's about someone with a bold, entirely far-fetched dream, where you know it will end in tears, but you want to be supportive anyway."
Elsewhere, the songs of Sit Down for Dinner find ways forward in pure experimentation. "Melody Experiment" received its title when Makino "unlocked the song with the melody" in a moment of serendipity. "I was singing a little bit off, in a bluesy way, and I was so fascinated," she says. "It feels quite new, like something I haven't done before." With its stacked backing vocals, "Before" was written with children's voices in mind, narrated from the perspective of a kid who thinks they know it all. "Children have incredible abilities," Makino says. "They have a confidence that is so whole, they can see through you a little." Amid the windswept melodies and arrestingly bittersweet tone of "Not for Me," Amedeo gave himself the challenge of vulnerability, writing while Makino was in Italy, longing for that kind of freedom. "You ran with the flowers/And further than water/And further than our walls," he sings. "Move to the side, move to the light, move to a place that no one can find."
Releasing Sit Down for Dinner in its 30th year, Blonde Redhead's perseverance partially came in realizing that the process of making the record should necessarily be fun. "Usually I agonize and it's painful for me to write music, but on this one, I didn't suffer as much," says Makino. "I wanted to put my foot down and say: we can have a nice time together. The record sounds quite optimistic." Amedeo adds, "We do really respond to each other. We depend on each other for inspiration. Kazu completes what I start; Simone completes both with rhythm."
Perhaps this gives the title Sit Down for Dinner yet another layer, as the music, fittingly, is a pleasure, with the ease of new conversation among familiar friends. Crucial to that equation are Blonde Redhead's innate harmonic sensibilities, which Makino calls the core of the band. "We have a language we have kept," she adds. "We try to change rhythms, concepts, and sounds. But that harmonic sensibility has stayed the same. It hits the same part of your heart."
~~~~~~~~~
Blonde Redhead is an alternative rock or indie rock band. It was formed by Kazu Makino, Maki Takahashi and Italian twin brothers Simone and Amedeo Pace. They take their name from a song by DNA, a 70's and 80's no wave band from New York. Kazu Makino is married to Amedeo Pace.
Amedeo and Simone Pace were born in Milan and grew up in Montreal, but moved later on to Boston to study jazz. After earning their Bachelor's degrees, they began playing in the New York City underground music scene. The Pace brothers and Kazu Makino and Maki Takahashi - Japanese art students - formed the band in 1993 after a chance meeting at an Italian restaurant in New York.
Blonde Redhead caught the attention of Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley, who produced their self-titled debut in 1993. Shortly afterwards, Maki Takahashi left the band, and the remaining band members continued as a trio. On their third album, Fake Can Be Just as Good, they were joined by Vern Rumsey of Unwound as a guest bassist. After this, they continued without a bass player for the release of the remainder of their albums. On their fourth album, In an Expression of the Inexpressible, Guy Picciotto of Fugazi was hired as producer, as well as contributing to / singing on the song "Futurism vs. Passeism Part 2". Guy Picciotto also produced their records, Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons and Misery Is a Butterfly. Alan Moulder (Nine Inch Nails, U2, Smashing Pumpkins) produced their most recent record, 23.
---------
Blonde Redhead has always been a band that innovates with each album. They challenge themselves with each recording situation, and the results have been stunning every time. Their music is always inspired by the same emotions, but their tastes and ways they choose to execute those emotions are constantly evolving. It was the early conversations about how to make this record that led the band to work with the up and coming Swedish duo Van Rivers and The Subliminal Kid (Henrik von Sivers and Peder Mannerfelt) as producers on the record. Drew Brown (Radiohead, Beck) also came on board to record the tracks that would eventually be used in Stockholm.
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