Sub Pop To Release Sebadoh’s “Harmacy (30th Anniversary Expanded Edition)” On November 20th

Sub Pop To Release Sebadoh’s “Harmacy (30th Anniversary Expanded Edition)” on November 20th. Harmacy (30th Anniversary Expanded Edition) includes the original 19-track album along with 16 additional songs, including rare and unreleased alternate tracks and studio sessions, retouched and remastered for this release.

On Friday, November 20th, Sub Pop will release Sebadoh’s Harmacy (30th Anniversary Expanded Edition) worldwide on 2xLP, 2xCD, and digitally through all streaming providers. This thoughtfully expanded update finally makes the group’s seminal out-of-print 1996 indie-rock album available again on physical formats, adding 16 bonus tracks, including alternate versions, rare B-sides, BBC sessions, and live material from the Harmacy era.

JJ Golden at Golden Mastering has also retouched and remastered this 30th anniversary expanded edition. You can now listen to today’s offering, an alternate version of “Beauty of the Ride.” Share on YouTube below.

Sebadoh’s Harmacy (30th Anniversary Expanded Edition) is available now to preorder on CD/LP/Digital from Sub Pop. LP preorders from megamart.subpop.com in North America, Mega Mart Europe in the UK and EU, and your local record store will receive the limited Loser edition on Sky Blue and Opaque Red Sparkle vinyl (while supplies last). The LP edition also includes the 12-page “Lou’s Harmacy Timeline” zine, written and illustrated by Sebadoh’s Lou Barlow.

Sebadoh formed in 1986 in Northampton, Massachusetts, with Eric Gaffney and Lou Barlow (Dinosaur Jr., The Folk Implosion), adding multi-instrumentalist Jason Loewenstein in 1989, and Bob Fay in 1994. By 1994, the band had released five records and more or less changed the pockmarked face of indie rock. Their albums were mostly home recordings, decried for their lack of sharp production, but embraced by fans of Barlow’s intimate songwriting style, which owed as much to Joni Mitchell as Bob Mould.

Harmacy is their breakout sixth album, and was originally released in August 1996 to immense critical and popular acclaim. It found Sebadoh as conflicted as ever: torn between screaming punk and gentle crooning, replete with highly personal songs guaranteed to bring down even the most super-charged midnight ravers. Released in the wake of The Folk Implosion’s Top 40 hit “Natural One,” Harmacy became Sebadoh’s first charting album in the US. Their US tour following its release was by far their most successful to date, selling out almost everywhere, and complete with screaming, autograph-demanding young fans chanting the words to Harmacy’s deceptively upbeat single “Ocean”.

Interview Magazine said of the album, “Harmacy is nothing short of a masterpiece.” The New Yorker called it a collection of “perfectly crafted, honest (read: ambiguous and emotionally twisted), impassioned songs about love and hate.” Harmacy was also hailed as one of the best albums of 1996 by the likes of Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, and NME.

Read more on Sebadoh here.