Punk legends Descendents have announced a new album.
9th & Walnut will be released via Epitaph Records on July 23, and will feature recordings made by the Descendents line-up that recorded debut album Milo Goes To College: vocalist Milo Aukerman, bassist Tony Lombardo, drummer Bill Stevenson, and late guitarist Frank Navetta, who died in 2008.
The recordings that make up 9th & Walnut – named after the band's rehearsal space – were made in 2002, a period during which which the band re-recorded instrumental versions of the first 17 songs they wrote together between 1977 and 1980, plus a version of the Dave Clark Five's 1963 hit Glad All Over. Aukerman finally added new vocals last year.
"We just practiced and practiced," Stevenson tells Rolling Stone, "and we got [the songs] all up to speed. We tried not to upgrade them or make them fancier than they were. We tried to just leave them how they really were back in the day.
The first song to emerge from the new album is Baby Doncha Know, originally written well before Aukerman joined the band.
"Baby Doncha Know was maybe the fifth song we learned,” says Stevenson. “We would go out to 9th & Walnut every weekend and practice all day. I mainly just remember being in awe of how ‘a kid my age, who goes to my high school’ could have written all these cool songs.
"Frank seemed to have a maturity beyond his years. I never asked him who or what it was about. I was just happy to be there with him and Tony”.
9th & Walnut is available to pre-order now.
9th & Walnut tracklist
- Sailor's Choice
- Crepe Suzette
- You Make Me Sick
- Lullaby
- Nightage
- Baby Doncha Know
- Tired of Being Tired
- I'm Shaky
- Grudge
- Mohicans
- Like the Way I Know
- It’s A Hectic World
- To Remember
- Yore Disgusting
- It's My Hair
- I Need Some
- Ride the Wild
- Glad All Over
