THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “In spring 2020, Kazu Makino encountered a passage from Joan Didion’s 2005 memoir of grief, The Year of Magical Thinking, which reflects on the au¢thorʼs devastating experience of witnessing her husbandʼs sudden death at the dinner table. 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 albumʼs title: “Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.”
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. Itʼs a meticulous and immersive testament to the unique internal logic Blonde Redhead have refined over their three-decade existence, one characterized by the sense of persistent togetherness.
Before, one of the most sonically playful tracks on the album. With its stacked vocals by singer and multi-instrumentalist Makino, the track was written with the notion of reincarnation in mind, narrated from the perspective of a kid who seems to know it all:
“I donʼt need to see
I already know
I can tell you Iʼve seen it all before
Once upon a time
Was I a silent child seen it all before
Stop before you run
Before you make a run / Turn it upside down.”
Kazu elaborates, “Some children seem quite knowing as if they remember their past lives… or at least that’s the impression I get. The song is a sort of celebration of that kind of quality in a young person.”
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mVsXKiL8exy2lKuAC3RoH-456YOp-Un2s&feature=shared
