After discovering a box of reel-to-reel tapes with unreleased music in the Ivy archives last year, New York '90s indie rock trio Ivy — comprised of Adam Schlesinger, Andy Chase and Dominique Durand — have announced their first album in 14 years. Traces of You arrives September 5 via Bar/None, and features the band's "beloved Adam playing on every song!"
Following the death of co-founder Schlesinger (also of Fountains of Wayne) from coronavirus complications in 2020, it had seemed "certain" that Ivy was done, said Chase. However, after finding the unreleased songs while working on the Ivy reissues, they got ahold of former Ivy keyboardist/guitarist Bruce Driscoll and brought the songs back to life. The demos and song fragments used for the forthcoming record are from between 1995 and 2012, and every track features Schlesinger on bass with his family's blessing.
"You can imagine how terrible it's been to lose Adam. The only silver lining is that we could breathe life into these songs that he contributed to and it was a great experience making this record happen," Chase shared [via Stereogum]. "It was some of the most fun I've ever had, working on music with Dominique and Bruce."
He continued, "It was also bittersweet. But what was nice about the bittersweetness was that I wasn't alone in feeling that way. We all did. We were like a school of fish — three little fish, missing that fourth fish, all swimming in perfect union with each other, going through both the highs and lows."
The band have also shared the Driscoll-directed music video for the record's first single "Say You Will," featuring Schlesinger on bass and keyboards and Joey Waronker on drums. Check out the music video, and see the tracklist for Traces of You, below.
Traces of You:
- The Midnight Hour
- Fragile People
- Mystery Girl
- Traces of You
- The Great Unknown
- Say You Will
- Heartbreak
- Lose It All
- Wasting Time
- Hate That It's True