Written and recorded over a five-year period spanning New York City, upstate New York, Milan and Tuscany, Sit Down for Dinner is immaculately structured, imbued with sensitivity, clarity and resolve. Throughout the album, the understated yet visceral melodies create a foil to lyrics about the inescapable struggles of adulthood: communication breakdown in enduring relationships, wondering which way to turn, holding onto your dreams.
In spring 2020, Makino encountered a passage from Joan Didion’s 2005 memoir of grief, The Year of Magical Thinking, which reflects on her devastating experience of witnessing her husband’s sudden death at the dinner table. Amid the profound uncertainty of those early pandemic months, Makino was thinking of her own parents far away in Japan; the then-lost ritual of congregating for dinner with family; and the heavy, omnipresent feeling that life could change in the instant for any of us. There was one line in particular that would eventually lend itself to the album’s title: “Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.” Simultaneously, the album has a separate resonance for the Pace brothers. Culturally, dinner is a nonnegotiable family ritual, one that the trio implemented while rehearsing or on tour. “I know a lot of people eat and run, eat in front of their TV, or don’t care about it too much—and that’s OK—but we really do,” says Simone. “It’s a moment for us to sit down and have time with each other.”
Limited to 500 copies, the VMP exclusive version of Blonde Redhead's Sit Down For Dinner is pressed on Transparent Violet vinyl at Optimal Media Production. The 1LP will arrive in a single, direct-to-board, foil-stamped and numbered jacket. It was mastered by Heba Kadry at Heba Kadry NYC.