Andrew W.K. – 55 Cadillac (Pre-Order)
A jet-black ‘55 Cadillac Fleetwood, hard-bodied, sleek and gleaming. A Model D Steinway grand piano with a satin ebony lustre. Two disparate objects with one connecting principal: a man dressed in white.
"For his 5th album, 55 Cadillac, Andrew W.K., the iconic white clad-rocker best-known for performing physically-punishing, party-rocking anthems plays against type in the most dramatic fashion…with a recording of solo piano improvisations. The album is also Andrew’s first solo release on his new Skyscraper Music Maker imprint (a co-venture with the UK’s Cargo Records) and will be released simultaneously in a deluxe gatefold vinyl edition by
Thurston Moore’s label Ecstatic Peace.
At first listen, 55 Cadillac seems as far removed as it could be from the brash, rousing and driving music that features on previous Andrew W.K. albums. Intimate, personal, unaccompanied and almost entirely unadorned, it features 8 freeform piano pieces that were composed at the same time that they were played and recorded. But 55 Cadillac is driving music too, albeit a very different kind.
This is not so much music to drive to-although it would certainly be not only possible but immensely-pleasurable and fun to listen to while operating a car - but music that embodies the experience of driving itself: the peculiar headspace one enters and the intuitive, mechanical mind/body interaction that occurs while doing so. It sounds the way the world might look as it passes by while sitting in a car, driving at the dead of night through unfamiliar terrain without a map: an experience that is as exhilarating, as it is strange and magical.
A classically-trained musician, Andrew has been playing piano since he was 4 years old - making this record was not so much a sharp left-turn in his musical career as a return to the instrument that he describes as ‘the root of my whole musical experience’. But then, since emerging in 2001 with his signature tune, “Party Hard”, and debut album, “I Get Wet’, Andrew W.K. has also delighted in confounding expectations.