Ivy’s Andy Chase knows a thing or two about record labels. After all, his band has recorded for about a half-dozen of them in its decade-long career. In an effort to bring the projects Ivy’s three members contribute to under one umbrella, Chase has formed Unfiltered Records. Yesterday (Aug. 26), the imprint issued Chase’s solo debut as Brookville, “Wonderfully Nothing,” as well as Ivy’s “Lately” EP and albums “Realistic” and “Apartment Life.”
“It’s one thing to say it and another thing to actually be running a label,” Chase admits to Billboard.com. “It’s a good idea in theory, but we’ll see how it pans out in practice.”
Brookville has its roots in the song “This Is the Last Time,” a demo of which Chase submitted, with his vocals, to Ivy singer Dominique Durand and multi-instrumentalist Adam Schlesinger for potential inclusion on the group’s 2001 album “Long Distance.” Ivy opted not to record the cut, but Cardinal principal Eric Matthews, who was on hand to add horn parts, encouraged Chase to continue recording tracks with his own vocals.
“That was the first time it sunk in that I had something I really liked the sound of, even though I thought it was a scratch vocal,” Chase recalls. “Eric was telling me it didn’t need to be ratified by Dominique and Adam, and that was a concept that hadn’t occurred to me.”
“Wonderfully Nothing” carries more of a somber vibe than most of Ivy’s catalog, which Chase says is the result of “being left unchecked. Adam has a great ability to come up with brilliant, closer-to-center pop songs. I’m a little more left-of-center, and the end result in Ivy is somewhere in between. You can see how the roads diverge even more when we don’t have Dominique pulling us toward the middle.” Brookville is planning to tour Japan and North America this fall.
While Chase worked on Brookville and Schlesinger recorded and toured with his other band, Fountains Of Wayne, Ivy still found time to “chip away on a new record,” according to Chase. He says the set is about half-finished and will likely be released early next year as the last in a deal with Nettwerk. “I think this will be a little more rock with more straight-ahead grooves, perhaps tipping our hat more toward New Order or the Cure,” Chase says.
Unfiltered will hopefully become Ivy’s permanent home in the future, and Chase says he’s trying to convince Matthews to work with the label for his first solo album since 1997’s Sub Pop set “The Lateness of the Hour.” A long-awaited Ivy rarities collection is also in the works for “sometime after the release” of the group’s next studio set.
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