Ted Leo + the Pharmacists releasing first album in 7 years (stream a clip)

It’s been seven years since Ted Leo + the Pharmacists released a new album (2010’s The Brutalist Bricks on Matador), but they’re finally releasing a new one this year. He recorded most of the songs with longtime Pharmacists drummer Chris Wilson (who’s also currently in Titus Andronicus and Open City). The album also features contributions from Ted’s The Both partner Aimee Mann, plus Jean Grae, Adrienne Berry and Jonathan Coulton. Ted parted ways with Matador, but he’s currently crowdfunding the album on Kickstarter and planning to release it this December. (UPDATE: the album is now fully funded, but the Kickstarter campaign continues to run through 3/24) He wrote a lot about the background for this album, and it’s all very worth reading. Here’s an excerpt:

I probably had enough songs to complete an album a good five years ago, but a number of things – personal and financial – prevented me from doing it. And though it’s always been a constant source of low-level anxiety that so much time continues to pass by, I’ve also come to see that time as a boon. When I missed that first hurdle, that first deadline to PRODUCE SOMETHING, the world didn’t end. Time kept moving, and all of the expectations that I had for MYSELF morphed into a more compassionate and contemplative group of feelings that were more about incubating, honing, experimenting, learning, and rebuilding a certain amount of confidence that I think I’d lost in my stymied relationship with the cycles of releases and promotion and needing support (not just financial) from the label I was working for; and so I started to actually just allow myself that time. It hasn’t always been easy, and I’ve grown and changed some over the long course of working on this. But having the eventual freedom to work on it at my own pace, and in my own space, has allowed this body of songs to change and grow with me. And now we find ourselves in a new political reality, and I find myself compelled to keep writing. We’re close enough, though, that I feel like I can set the stage to finally offer this work to you.

Read the rest and watch a video where Ted talks even more about the album, HERE.

Ted also released a sampler with five minutes of music from the new album, and you can check that out right here: