Damian and I had the pleasure of seeing onetime indie pop darlings Ivy on Thursday at Sony Hall, something that once seemed highly improbable given the band's travails.
The trio (unofficially) broke up (officially) acrimoniously around 2011 -- with Andy Chase and Adam Schlesinger closing their recording studio and becoming estranged for many years -- but had discussed making a new album after reconnecting in February 2020, only for Schlesinger to die of Covid-19 six weeks later.
Devastated by Schlesinger’s death, Chase and Dominique Durand reconnected with former Ivy champion Mark Lipsitz -- now CEO of Bar/None Records -- to give the band the proper sendoff it deserved. The plan was to reissue Ivy’s first three albums with unreleased bonus material, but while combing through the archives in 2021, the pair uncovered a treasure trove of unfinished songs spanning the band’s entire career.
With the blessing of Schlesinger’s family and estate, Chase and Durand enlisted longtime touring keyboardist Bruce Driscoll to help complete the material. The result was last year’s “Traces of You,” featuring contributions from Schlesinger drawn from demos and fragments recorded between 1995 and 2012. The album included 10 newly finished songs, with the remaining tracks set to arrive on a second collection later this year.
Which brings us to Thursday, the second date (after Chicago) following a 15-year hiatus. And rather than awkwardly trying to replace Schlesinger, Ivy built the show around him, using his pre-recorded bass tracks throughout the performance while projecting playful archival videos during songs like “Worry About You” and dedicating “I Think of You” to their late bandmate. (Durand also got emotional noting that Lipsitz, who had "discovered" the band even though she had refused to ever perform live, died before the album's release. He was just 61.)
The low-key, emotional set mixed classics from across the band’s catalog (“I’ve Got a Feeling,” “Edge of the Ocean,” “Get Enough”) with four songs from “Traces of You,” with Chase and Driscoll handling backing vocals and a trumpet player popping in for a couple of numbers, while Durand charmed the crowd with intimate banter in her trademark accent, singing as if a day hadn’t gone by.
Dominique Durand
Ex-husband Andy Chase
Bruce Driscoll
Catholic priest on drums?
Before the show began, Damian and I met up with our friends Brian and Toby -- whom we'd run into at the Beacon Theatre last November just as news circulated that Ivy would perform live again. Brian mentioned he’d peeked at the setlist and noticed it covered a lot of ground -- though notably absent were any songs from the “breakup” album, “All Night.” I was perfectly fine with that, having always felt it and its predecessor, “In the Clear,” were weaker than the band’s earlier work.
Later, while autopsying the show with Brian via Messenger in the days that followed, I mentioned this and he responded that he "came in" with "Long Distance" (the band's third album) and felt each album since "had its moments" -- and that, in fact, he actually knew the first two albums the least.
It got me thinking about how the point at which one "comes in" with an artist can have such an oversized effect, remembering that my husband "came in" with “Bedtime Stories,” so to me his view of Madonna is completely warped. (And don't get me started about his relationship with Blondie and “No Exit”!)
Given that I'm actually an Ivy-come-lately, having only discovered the mid-90s band in the early aughts, the irony is not lost on me that I'm hardly in a position to be a purist about their "early good" stuff. But then I remembered that once I found out about them, I made a point of learning the albums in chronological order, so maybe the whole "came in" theory still holds.
With this in mind, I proceeded to play "In the Clear" and "All Night" over and over and it wasn't long before I was asking myself: what's your fucking problem? These albums are incredible and every bit on par with everything else Ivy has done.
So, it was an incredible evening buoyed by the fact that my go-to Ivy catalog just increased by 40 percent or so -- with more TK -- even if I still think "Wish It All Away" is by far their best song.
😀
