Blonde Redhead Plan to Release Different Versions of 'Penny Sparkle'

Posted on Sep 27th 2010 3:00PM by Mike Ayers
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Josh Rothstein

Earlier this month, New York dream-rockers Blonde Redhead released their eighth studio album, 'Penny Sparkle.' As they told Spinner, the recording sessions were rather tense affairs that actually yielded a whole different album of the same songs. So, if you're a Redhead fan and currently unsatisfied with one version of 'Penny Sparkle,' they hope to release a few more at some point, too.

"We ended up having many different versions," guitarist/vocalist Kazu Makino tells Spinner. "We're going to have a couple more albums of the same songs, I think."

It's not uncommon for a band to release alternate versions of songs -- deluxe packaging these days pretty much hones in on that idea -- but what Blonde Redhead has cooking sounds like more than just getting demo versions out there. "A lot of the versions that we didn't choose are the one's that sound 'more like us,'" Makino says. She's hinting that the songs that make up 'Penny Sparkle' exist in a different form, meaning they could be less electronic, faster paced and heavier on the guitars. "They're good," she promises, "but we ended up choosing ones that were out of our comfort zone. The whole thing was pretty uncomfortable -- in a good way. We have something here, even if we fail miserably."

While Makino doesn't give any timeframe to when we could be seeing 'Penny Sparkle' versions two, three or four, they'll be mixing those new songs into the fold of their past catalog on tour this fall. "I get some satisfaction out of some of these [other] versions," she says. "Some of them I really loved and I didn't want them to stay with me. I want people to hear them."

The original 'Penny Sparkle' is out now on 4AD.

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