Ivy – Fragile People

Ivy recently announced their first new album in 12 years, built from the ground up using demos and song fragments dating from between 1995 to 2012, Traces of You is due out September 5th via Bar/None Records.

Today, they’ve shared the album’s second single, the introspective “Fragile People.”

Formed in 1994, Ivy includes Andy Chase, Dominique Durand, and the late Adam Schlesinger. Sadly, Durand and Chase assumed that Ivy was in the rearview after Schlesinger tragically passed away from COVID-19 in 2020. While prepping recent reissues of their back catalog, the band unearthed a trove of reel-to-reel tapes and old hard drives stored in their Rhode Island studio. The duo knew they would only consider working on Ivy demos featuring Schlesinger, but they were overwhelmed by deciding which songs to finish. In response, they reached out to Ivy’s backing keyboardist and guitarist, Bruce Driscoll, to help go through the archives and revive these lost recordings.

On today’s single, Chase says the title “resonated with Dominique and I deeply in the aftermath of losing Adam. This is one of the few songs that would constantly bring us to tears even as Bruce, Dominique and I were writing it.”

Every song on Traces of You features contributions from Schlesinger, with the blessing of his family. The resulting music possesses the twinkling magic of Ivy’s classic work, paired with the kind of emotional wisdom gleaned from surviving life’s most challenging moments. Lead single “Say You Will,” an oceanic synth-pop song featuring drums from Joey Waronker (Beck, R.E.M.), was built from a 2009 demo where Schlesinger played bass and keyboard.

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