Ivy – Apartment Life (25th Anniversary Edition) (2023) FLAC

“This is probably the most important record Ivy ever made,” Andy Chase says now. “Me, Dominique and Adam were in NYC going from our apt to the studio every day. It was a glorious time for us – we would just wake up inspired and excited about everything we were doing. We knew we were becoming better at our craft and were excited to show the world. I think with this album we finally succeeded in demonstrating our ability to write and produce great pop songs. It was also the first and last time the three of us smoked pot for the entire duration of an album, supplied by our good friend and co producer Pete Nashel. We also had a healthy budget from Atlantic Records so we had a blast hiring horn players, string quartets, stretching our wings as producers and creating sounds in the studio we had never done before. Songs from this album appeared in countless tv shows, commercials and movies, putting us on the map in Hollywood among the music supervisors and directors, ultimately exposing us to a much larger universe. It was without a doubt the most fun we three ever had making music together. It was a special record for us and still is probably the favorite among our fanbase. For the past 20 years they have been asking for it on vinyl, and with Adam now gone, and IVY signing to Bar None Records to re release our entire catalogue of work, it was finally time to memorialize Apartment Life on vinyl.”

The 25th anniversary reissue also comes with two digital bonus tracks that were previously only available on the Japanese edition of the CD. You can listen to “Sleeping Late” now. “Despite being quite ambitious and driven, Dominique, Adam and I were not early risers, at all,” says Chase. “Although ‘Sleeping Late’ started as a joke between us, underneath it’s cutesy, ironic exterior lives a more serious quintessential urban tale about being stuck at home and not wanting to leave. Dominique always loved the Velvet Underground song ‘After Hours,’ loved the way Mo Tucker sang it, and tried to embody Mo’s innocent naivety and spirit in her vocal performance. We kept it simple and dry, inspired by early Beatles productions. We didn’t put it on the Apartment Life album since it was meant to be silly and sort of tongue and cheek, but we ultimately used it as a bonus track for the Japanese release, figuring over there most people wouldn’t understand the lyrics and never know what lazy idiots we were.”