'Sit Down for Dinner' by Blonde Redhead
Although the alternative- and experimental-rock band Blonde Redhead has taken a hiatus or two before, the pause between albums nine and 10—2014’s Barragán and 2023’s Sit Down for Dinner—is Kubrickian, even if the latter album took shape over five years of the interregnum.
It comes out nearly 30 years after Smells Like, the label started by Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley, released an early Blonde Redhead single, “Vague”/“Jet Star,” that drew parallels between the two bands, both reared in the New York City underground scene.
Blonde Redhead has, however, become softer, more reflective, and altogether prettier than Sonic Youth did before its demise; now, Kazu Mikuno and brothers Amedeo and Simone Pace more closely resemble Yo La Tengo’s dynamic as a mature trio.
That maturity has suffused the music with the internationalism of the band members, reflecting not only their backgrounds—Mikuno is Japanese and the Pace brothers were born in Italy—but also their fondness for Brazilian sensuousness and No Wave’s idea of jazz, among other modes.
Mikuno is the most literally vocal evidence of the suffusion: although she can still indicate No Wave influences—unafraid of atonal inflections a la Yoko Ono, for example—in tracks like the pensive “Via Savona,” she also quests for an unusual classification of tunefulness in the glittering, melancholy “Kiss Her Kiss Her.”
Amedeo is as frequent a vocal presence, but more inclined toward the groovy warmth of Beck in his most comforting moods. He leans back to let his guitars and Simone’s drums, organic and computerized, generate the tension in the neo-honkytonk of “Not for Me” or the drifting Leonard Cohen drama of “I Thought You Should Know.”
Sit Down for Dinner isn’t a cliched return to form or an attempt to justify a long absence. It’s more like a compilation of missives from a band that didn’t make more music until it felt sure it had more music to make.
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Stream or download Sit Down for Dinner on Amazon here.
