Ivy have broken their silence a decade since releasing Hours, their final album together, to share a tribute to their friend and former bandmate Adam Schlesinger, who died on April 1, 2020 at the age of 52 from complications due to COVID-19. To honor Schlesinger, the pair are releasing a collection of rare footage they’ve had archived for nearly three decades. “We knew Adam Schlesinger for 30 years,” said Andy Chase and Dominique Durand in a joint statement, “and felt we should finally create an official Ivy statement about who he was to us.”
Originally formed in New York City in 1994, the trio released six albums together, dating back to their 1995 debut Realistic, throughout nearly 17 years together. Chase initially bonded with Durand over a deep love of 1980s British bands like The Smiths, and later placed an ad in The Village Voice looking for collaborators, which attracted Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood, who wanted Chase to join their musical project Pinwheel, which was an earlier rendering of Fountains of Wayne.
Following the tragic passing of Schlesinger, the pair began looking back at their collection of home videos and memories of their two decades together with Schlesinger as a band. “We wanted to show a more intimate, human side to Adam—the friend, the father, the bandmate, the whirlwind force that he was—so we made this short film using exclusive home movies and photos,” said the couple. “Hopefully this will help add more weight and color to the extraordinary legacy that Adam left behind.”
Watch it below.
