American Hi-Fi don’t just want to be the flavor of the week (weak). Four years after the release of their last album, the power pop quartet is back with a new studio long player titled “Blood & Lemonade,” due out Sept. 16 via Rude Records.
Check out the catchy new single “Allison” below:
Singer/frontman Stacy Jones spends a great deal of his time these days as music director and touring drummer for Miley Cyrus, helping her keep her human hot dogs, giant cats and Flaming Lips collaborations straight during the massive, worldwide Bangerz tour. But he had an itch to get the band going again.
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“We had a few days off in London after the Miley show, so when we saw that on the schedule we asked her, ‘Do you care if we play a Hi-Fi show?'” Jones remembers. “And she was like, ‘Fuck yeah, I’m gonna come!’
And she did! Cyrus joined a sell out crowd at the 100 Club Wednesday night (May 7).
“For me it was a real litmus test for Hi-Fi,” Jones says. “We really haven’t been an active band since 2005. We’ve done some recording. We’ve played some shows here and there, but we hadn’t really done anything real since. So I called the other guys in the band and said, ‘Let’s see what happens. If 40 or 50 people show up, we’ll have a fun night and play a show, but we’ll know to call it a day. But if it’s a good turnout, then maybe it’s something we can build on.’ And the show sold out. Granted, it’s a small place, but it sold pretty quickly and people seemed to be pretty excited about it.”
No longer recording with a major label watching, Jones says the “Blood & Lemonade” sessions “the most organic and honest songwriting” he’s done in years.
“It’s more the space I was in when I wrote the first record,” he tells Billboard. “When I wrote the first record, we didn’t have a record deal and we weren’t trying to be rock stars or anything. We were getting together, drinking beer and jamming songs. We never really thought it would become anything… This record was written and made with that spirit.”
American Hi-Fi’s biggest hit, “Flavor of the Weak” peaked at No. 41 on the Hot 100 and No. 5 on Alternative Songs in 2001. Their last release was 2010’s “Fight the Frequency.”