Sleepyhead prep first album in 8 years (watch "Pam and Eddie" video)
NYC/Boston indie rock vets Sleepyhead will release New Alchemy, their first album in eight years, this Friday, August 19. They made it at legendary Boston studio Q Division, and the title was inspired by New Alchemy Institute, a utopian research facility founded by idealistic scientists in the 1970’s in Falmouth, Massachusetts, the hometown of Sleepyhead guitarist/vocalist Chris O’Rourke. For years O’Rourke had wanted to write songs about the trips there he took as a child, and here decided to use it for the new album’s title.
We’ve got the premiere of the sweet, jangly “Pam and Eddie,” which Chris says is “one of two songs inspired by things we saw written out in the world.” He elaborates: “In this case something etched onto a stone stair in [drummer/vocalist Rachael McNally]’s late sister’s apartment building in Brooklyn, where her husband, our dear brother-in-law, best known as Uncle Andrew, still lives. It says “EDDIE -N- PAM 4-EVER 10-12-90 I LOVE YOU.”
“Ever since they moved into the building, I”ve found it fascinating,” Chris continues. “We’ve gone up and down those stairs countless times and at some point I realized there was a song in there. Do Eddie and Pam still live in Brooklyn? Did they live in the building? Are they still together? I imagined the narrator walking down the stairs, noticing the graffiti, wandering off into Prospect Park, which is just a few blocks away, and looking at every couple and wondering if it could be the Pam and Eddie.”
The video was likewise inspired by the song, imagining Pam and Eddie’s lives. Watch that below.
Sleepyhead have a couple upcoming shows: NYC’s Berlin Under A on August 27 with Personal Space and Coleman Moore, and Boston’s Square Root on September 17.
