It makes sense that Blonde Redhead is slated to have their new album released on Partisan Records’ new independent offshoot, section1. Aiming to release bands with an “art-first way” ethos, rock trio Blonde Redhead (Kazu Makino, and twins Simone and Amedeo Pace) are a perfect fit.
Since the ’90s they have meticulously curated a sound that is hard to pin down. Often compared to Sonic Youth in the early years of their career, traces of experimental elements alongside their no wave abrasion made guest appearances on each album, but a new level of cinematic ambiance climaxed with 2004’s Misery Is a Butterfly. It’s a space they’ve mastered and continue to reinvent. Throughout it all there is a language they have kept, Makino says. “We try to change rhythms, concepts, and sounds. But that harmonic sensibility has stayed the same. It hits the same part of your heart.”
It’s been eight years since their last album, Masculin Féminin, and now Blonde Redhead is back with their eleventh album Sit Down for Dinner. “Snowman” the album’s first single told through the somber breeze of Brazilian, experimental music captures Amedeo’s feeling as to “how it can be a blessing or a curse to be invisible and undetectable, and how it’s something we all feel and desire at times.”
Floating melodies and a looking glass of romance, sadness, and renewal saturate Blonde Redhead’s sound—“Melody Experiment,” the album’s second single is no exception. Makino’s sensuous vocals wash out the discordant guitar segments in another promising sample of what Sit Down for Dinner is offering.
“Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends,” is a line from Joan Didion’s memoir The Year of Magical Thinking that inspired the album’s title. Read in the spring of 2020, Makino was deep in thought over that one line, lost dinner rituals, missing her own family in Japan, and “omnipresent feeling that life can change in the instant for any of us.” During rehearsals and while on tour, Blonde Redhead is steadfast about dining together every night. “It’s a moment for us to sit down and have time with each other,” Simone says.
Out on a North American and European Tour until the end of the year with some festival dates included, I foresee Blonde Redhead’s atypical sound piquing the interest of a younger fanbase. Blonde Redhead will be hosting special dinners at select restaurants in Paris, London, New York, and Los Angeles around the album’s release—offering a rare chance to spend actual time with the band. Sit Down for Dinner is set to release at the end of September.
Pre-order Sit Down for Dinner here.
