Photo by Charles Billot

At NYC’s peak era of Aughts indie, many of the more influential gatekeepers took a band like Blonde Redhead for granted. Their sound – an evolving framework of alternative that traversed no wave, shoegaze, and experimental electronic pop – had its noticeable touchpoints, but as history has proven, was still way more outside the box than what became of the middle indie rock and boilerplate dream-pop in the years proceeding it. Their return on “Snowman”, the lead single from their first new music since 2014 and 10th studio effort, Sit Down for Dinner, reinforces hindsight and makes it all the more easy to appreciate where Kazu Makino and the brothers Pace are in the present, every moment moving with intentionality. “Snowman” is unassuming in its gentler return to the surface, with the listen leaning into experimental Brazilian pop and acapella harmonies to create a sensation of floating between the dualistic powers of being unseen. “Do you feel alive or do you only fall? / A fall to remember / So like a no man that you are,” Amadeo’s voice swaths warmth over cool. In this new temperature, Blonde Redhead are outside of and within everything, just as they always were, in their own form.

Blonde Redhead’s Sit Down for Dinner will be released September 29th on section1.