Chic is engaged on a brand new album with the son of the band’s late frontman.
The massively influential Lengthy Seaside ska-punk trio — whose singer Bradley Nowell died in 1996 — stated Wednesday that it’s writing and recording songs with Nowell’s 29-year-old son Jakob, who stepped into his father’s position with Chic in late 2023. The band is working with producers Travis Barker (of Blink-182) and John Feldmann and plans to launch the LP’s first single this summer season.
“I grew up on Sublime,” Barker stated in a press release, including that the band’s 1992 album “40 Oz. to Freedom” “changed the way I listened to music.” Feldmann, identified for his work with pop-punk acts together with Good Charlotte and 5 Seconds of Summer season, stated working with Chic “has been a highlight of my life.”
After performing with Chic for the primary time in public at a profit live performance for H.R. of the pioneering hardcore Unhealthy Brains, Jakob Nowell fronted the band final yr at Coachella then went on to play a collection of pageant dates with drummer Bud Gaugh and bassist Eric Wilson, who fashioned Chic with Bradley Nowell within the late ’80s. Bradley Nowell’s loss of life from an unintentional heroin overdose got here simply two months earlier than the discharge of the band’s first major-label album. But that self-titled LP went on to turn into a quintuple-platinum smash, spawning late-’90s alt-rock radio staples like “What I Got,” “Santeria” and “Wrong Way.”
After Nowell’s loss of life, Gaugh and Wilson performed collectively within the Lengthy Seaside Dub Allstars; in 2009, the 2 drafted the singer and guitarist Rome Ramirez to carry out Chic’s music beneath the title Chic with Rome.
Final yr, Jakob Nowell advised The Occasions that folks had pressured him for years to play together with his dad’s former bandmates however that he’d all the time been reluctant, partially as a result of he had his personal musical pursuits and partially due to his sophisticated relationship together with his father’s reminiscence. He modified his thoughts after a “spiritual pilgrimage,” as he put it, to the theater in Petaluma the place Bradley Nowell performed his last gig.
Chic has tour dates scheduled this summer season together with a Could 3 cease on the BeachLife pageant in Redondo Seaside.
