Nashville-based duo and JOVM mainstays Friendship Commanders — Buick Audra (vocals, guitar) and Jerry Roe (drums, bass) — released their Kurt Ballou and Friendship Commanders co-produced third album MASS last year. MASS is a concept album that thematically focused on time’s inevitable passing, memory and Buick Audra’s personal experiences of living in and then leaving Massachusetts, because she no longer felt comfortable or welcome.
Back in 2017, the duo worked with the legendary musician and producer Steve Albini on their sophomore album 2018’s BILL. During the BILL recording sessions, the band became friends with Albini and according to the band “he made a permanent, indelible impact on us, and losing him has been profound.”
Along with his production duties, Albini had mixed the album, but those mixes had been previously unreleased — until today. “We always planned on releasing these mixes, but we’re doing so now to especially honor his life and memory,” the JOVM mainstays explain. “His mixes didn’t seem right at the time, but for the band we are now, they fit us better and honor the songs in a different light and energy that works for who we are now.”
Earlier this month, Friendship Commanders released the Albini mix of BILL track “Outlive You,” and the Albini mix seems rawer, stormier more urgent and seems — to me, at least — to capture the bitter ache in Audra’s delivery in a way that the previous mix just didn’t.
BILL (The Steve Albini Mixes) was released today — on what would have been Albini’s 62nd birthday. And fittingly, the visualizer begins with footage of Albini behind the decks during a studio session, the band performing the song and ends with Albini telling Buick that things sounded great, before asking her if she’d want to hear the playback.
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