For those unaware, when he first went digging through boxes of old tapes, Bauhaus and Love and Rockets co-founder David J didn’t yet know that he was about to embark on a long, fruitful conversation with his own past, present and even future self.

As he uncovered demos recorded over some four decades (released in 2024 in the form of the acclaimed triple album Tracks From the Attic), he noticed that some songs were asking him to get reacquainted with them. He eventually complied, approaching material that sometimes he had no recollection of having written as when producing another artist’s music.

The old demos became new demos: ideas reworked and sometimes radically transformed, lyrics adjusted when they showed a potential to narrate life in the not-so-roaring 2020s. Thus reshaped, the songs were shared with an ensemble that convened in the studio to breathe new life into them. Some are virtually unrecognizable, while some have kept their original form and charm intact - just developed and grown through the experience that comes with years of music making.

It’s an arresting distillation of David J’s eclectic taste and the ever evolving musicality that came out of it: from the influence of late ‘70s New Wave to a lifelong love of classic country and Nick Drake-like romanticism. Where the original Tracks From the Attic invited listeners to be present in the room as a young singer-songwriter found his own way (wandering in the fields of experimentation and collecting the meanderings that followed), the new album puts us in front of an artist who has honed his craft and mastered the art of pruning.

1. I Wish Those Spacemen Would Come
2. If Muzak Be the Junk Food of Love
3. The Most Beautiful Girls in the World
4. Leaning Toward the Falls
5. Homo Sapien Blues
6. I’ll Put Off Thinking About You for Awhile
7. New Year’s Day
8. All the Pilgrims
9. Vincent in the Flames
10. Punishment by Roses

With David J comparing the making of this album to the tending of a garden, he opens on the quiet rocker I Wish Those Spacemen Would Come and the aimable If Muzak Be the Junk Food of Love and then we are gifted the harmoniously genial The Most Beautiful Girls in the World, the low slung rock-hued balladry of Leaning Toward the Falls (Revisited) and then the Bowie-esque Homo Sapien Blues is brought forth.

Along next is the languishing beauty of I’ll Put Off Thinking About You for Awhile and the mellow-riffic New Year’s Day, and they are then in turn backed by the more strident fare of All the Pilgrims, the rhythmically-dulcet Vincent in the Flames, the new revisited set coming to a close on the melodiously sweet-sounding Punishment by Roses.

“The demos were like neglected little seeds that had been set aside, or fallen on fallow land,” he reflects. “They’ve been gathered up, nurtured, tended and brought back to life as little buds. Now this is the bloom.”

Official Purchase Link

www.davidjhaskins.com

David J @ Facebook