Blonde Redhead announce their return with new album ‘Sit Down For Dinner’

Blonde Redhead have announced details of their first studio album in nine years. ‘Sit Down For Dinner’ will be released 29th September via section1. The band have also shared new song ‘Snowman’ as a first taste of the album.

Written over a five year period, ‘Sit Down For Dinner’ is partially inspired by a passage from Joan Didion’s ‘The Year of Magical Thinking’, in which Didion witnessed her husband’s death at the dinner table. This prompted band member Kazu Makino to reflect on her own dinner rituals with her family in Japan, now lost due to the pandemic. One line from these reflections formed the basis of the album title: “Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.”

Dinner - the meal, obv - also held similar cultural importance for the Pace brothers: “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,” says Simone. “It’s a moment for us to sit down and have time with each other.”

Their new track ‘Snowman’ was reportedly inspired by the Swingle Sister’s acapella renditions of Bach. Sung by bandmember Amedeo Pace, the track was also inspired by Brazilian experimental music: “I got inspired to write a song that only had two chords and a melody that would live and float between them,” says Amedeo. “‘Snowman’ is about 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.”

Check out the tracklisting below.

1. Snowman
2. Kiss Her Kiss Her
3. Not for Me
4. Melody Experiment
5. Rest of Her Life
6. Sit Down for Dinner Pt 1
7. Sit Down for Dinner Pt 2
8. I Thought You Should Know
9. Before
10. If
11. Via Savona