ivy-apartment-life

Ivy's 'Apartment Life' getting 25th anniversary reissue & first-ever vinyl release (stream a bonus track)

Ivy - Floor Press Photo by Philippe Garcia

Ivy, the NYC trio of Dominique Durand, Andy Chase and Adam Schlesinger, released their second album, Apartment Life, in October of 1997. It was a marked step up from their 1995 debut, Realistic, with bigger, more ambitious production and arrangements, plus guest appearances from Lloyd Cole, Dean Wareham and James Iha. The songs were better too, and the album was loaded with breezy earworms like “This is the Day,” “I Get the Message,” “The Best Thing,” and more. Unfortunately, the band suffered from record label woes: Atlantic dropped them not long after the album was released, but then Sony rereleased it in 1999 with different artwork.

Apartment Life was never released on vinyl, but that is about to change, as the group have signed to Bar-None who are reissuing their entire catalogue, starting with Apartment Life one on March 3. You can preorder it on white vinyl.

“This is probably the most important record Ivy ever made,” Andy Chase says now. “Me, Dominique and Adam were in NYC going from our apt to the studio every day. It was a glorious time for us – we would just wake up inspired and excited about everything we were doing. We knew we were becoming better at our craft and were excited to show the world. I think with this album we finally succeeded in demonstrating our ability to write and produce great pop songs. It was also the first and last time the three of us smoked pot for the entire duration of an album, supplied by our good friend and co producer Pete Nashel. We also had a healthy budget from Atlantic Records so we had a blast hiring horn players, string quartets, stretching our wings as producers and creating sounds in the studio we had never done before. Songs from this album appeared in countless tv shows, commercials and movies, putting us on the map in Hollywood among the music supervisors and directors, ultimately exposing us to a much larger universe. It was without a doubt the most fun we three ever had making music together. It was a special record for us and still is probably the favorite among our fanbase. For the past 20 years they have been asking for it on vinyl, and with Adam now gone, and IVY signing to Bar None Records to re release our entire catalogue of work, it was finally time to memorialize Apartment Life on vinyl.”

The 25th anniversary reissue also comes with two digital bonus tracks that were previously only available on the Japanese edition of the CD. You can listen to “Sleeping Late” now. “Despite being quite ambitious and driven, Dominique, Adam and I were not early risers, at all,” says Chase. “Although ‘Sleeping Late’ started as a joke between us, underneath it’s cutesy, ironic exterior lives a more serious quintessential urban tale about being stuck at home and not wanting to leave. Dominique always loved the Velvet Underground song ‘After Hours,’ loved the way Mo Tucker sang it, and tried to embody Mo’s innocent naivety and spirit in her vocal performance. We kept it simple and dry, inspired by early Beatles productions. We didn’t put it on the Apartment Life album since it was meant to be silly and sort of tongue and cheek, but we ultimately used it as a bonus track for the Japanese release, figuring over there most people wouldn’t understand the lyrics and never know what lazy idiots we were.”

Listen to “Sleeping Late” and the original Apartment Life, below.

ivy-apartment-life

Apartment Life:
01 The Best Thing
02 I’ve Got A Feeling
03 This Is The Day
04 Never Do That Again
05 I Get The Message
06 Baker
07 You Don’t Know Anything
08 Ba Ba Ba
09 Get Out Of The City
10 These Are The Thing About You
11 Quick, Painless And Easy
12 Back In Our Town
13 Sleeping Late (digital only)
14 Sweet Mary (digital only)