Chromatics

Dear Tommy

[Italians Do It Better]

February

How do you follow-up a cinematically scaled 17-track Italo-disco opus that became the go-to fantasy late-night-drive soundtrack for a generation of club-hopping city kids who are too fucked up to get behind the wheel and/or too saddled with bad credit to qualify for a car loan? With another cinematically scaled 17-track Italo-disco opus, naturally. Though Chromatics mastermind Johnny Jewel has recently data-dumped everything from half-hour-long ambient symphonies to covers of ‘50s pop standards (among many other vault-clearing initiatives) onto his SoundCloud page, the tracklist for the upcoming Dear Tommy suggests a certain structural and thematic similarity to 2012’s epic Kill for Love, albeit with the added bonus of an enigmatic, biblically allusive cover shot of a fog-smothered apple to up the prog factor. (Two tracks, “Cherry” and “Camera”, were previewed on 2013’s After Dark 2 compilation, though they’ll reportedly appear in revised form on the new album.) According to Jewel’s Italians Do It Better imprint, Dear Tommy will be out “in time for Valentine’s Day”—in which case, don’t be surprised if you notice an uncommon amount of beautifully aloof newborns come December. —Stuart Berman