The indie-rock lifers in Refrigerator are set to release So Long To Farwell on Friday via Shrimper. The 14-LP features new guitarist Mark Givens (Wckr Spgt), soul-legend guest vocalist Claudia Lennear (Ike & Tina Turner Revue, and also the inspiration for the Stones’ “Brown Sugar”), longtime pal Franklin Bruno (Nothing Painted Blue) and cover art by current indie “It Artist” Jean Smith (Mecca Normal, and also a weekly MAGNET contributor for the past dozen years).
Givens joins Callaci brothers Allen (vocals) and Dennis (guitar) and bassist Daniel Brodo and drummer Chris Jones on So Long To Farwell, Refrigerator’s 12th album during the band’s three-decade career. But like the rest of us trying to adapt to these pandemic times, Refrigerator made the new LP in ways that were both old fashioned and brand new.
“We played a bunch of these songs at a show with Yo La Tengo at the El Rey back in September 2019 and were talking about our plans for 2020,” says Givens.
“Yeah, I look at it as an album that came together in three distinct phases,” says Allen Callaci. “It was recorded before the ravages of the pandemic, mixed during the pandemic’s peak and released on the cusp of what is hopefully the beginning of a gradual recovery.”
“It was wonderful for the five of us to improvise and write songs together every morning and then record them in the round,” says Dennis Callaci. “This is a method that both Refrigerator and Wckr Spgt utilized in our early days and, to a lesser degree, continue to do. It is our Frampton Cums Alive! with the quietest audience ever heard on a record. Fuck, I hope that audience is at the first movie house I go back into.”
Physically, So Long To Farwell is a vinyl-only release, available as a standard black LP as well as deluxe, limited-to-150-copies, green-and-white-swirled version that comes with a six-track bonus CD and 66-page chapbook.
You can stream the album today exclusively at MAGNET. Check it out right here, right now.
