Sit Down for Dinner is a pandemic album through and through, from its protracted, piecemeal recording process—spanning several seasons, multiple studios, and at least two continents—to its overwhelming sense of restless stasis. With life suddenly on pause, Makino was drawn to Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, a meditation on her husband John Gregory Dunne’s fatal heart attack at their dining-room table in December 2003. In this light, the phrase Sit Down for Dinner is less an invitation than a threat, and the duality of the sentiment is manifest in Makino’s two-part title-track suite, a hypnotically wistful ballad that upshifts abruptly into an accelerated drum-machine workout. “Sit down for dinner/And the life as you know, it ends/No pity,” Makino sings, quoting Didion in a tone so matter-of-fact it sounds like a merciless taunt. But as she skates atop the song’s icy-electro rhythm, the line becomes more of a seize-the-day manifesto—death can come for you at any moment, so you might as well get your rocks off while you can.
Though it goes a long way to reinstating Blonde Redhead’s singular mystique and impressionistic aura, Sit Down for Dinner is distinguished by an easygoing melodicism that, even in its darkest lyrical depths, makes it the warmest and most welcoming record in the band’s catalog. Where this band’s albums typically reflect the multicultural mosaic and avant-garde pedigree of their New York homebase, the sublime, spectral folk-rock of “Not for Me” bathes itself in a breezy West Coast ocean mist that blurs the line between ’70s gold and ’80s dream-pop. And never before has this band attempted something as unabashedly blissful as “I Thought You Should Know,” a slow-burning gospel-delic hymn that greets you with open arms and leads you down the path that connects the Velvets to Mazzy Star.
But where these contributions from Amedeo favor a more direct, open-hearted approach, Makino’s voice remains an enigmatic and beguiling instrument, investing songs like “Kiss Her Kiss Her” and “Before” with equal doses of wonder and weariness. Tellingly, just as they did 23 years ago on Melody for Certain Damaged Lemons, Blonde Redhead close Sit Down for Dinner with another arresting quasi-instrumental, “Via Savona,” that showcases Makino’s echoing incantations, but this hardly feels like some calculated ploy to piggyback on those “Damaged Coda” clicks. Rather, “Via Savona” is an enveloping ambient symphony that, depending on your vantage, could be a sign of Blonde Redhead’s creative rebirth or a requiem for their possible demise. While in the midst of making this record back in 2020, Makino told an interviewer she expected it would be “probably the last album we make together.” She may have had a change of heart since then, but should that prediction prove correct, Sit Down for Dinner is the coda this band deserves.
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