Mazzy Star Releases First Songs in 15 Years : October 18, 2011

Mazzy Star will release new music for the first time in fifteen years at the end of this month. Halloween will mark the release of the “Common Burn” digital single [...]

mazzy star Biography

Coming off the heels of the Paisley Underground music scene in California is Mazzy Star, the indie folk rock group who gained popularity in the mid-‘90s thanks to their hit, ‘Fade into You’. As the ‘80s came to a close, members of the band Opal – David Roback and Kendra Smith – formed Mazzy Star, whose sounds were not that different from the psychedelic vibes and folk rock influences for which Opal was best remembered for. A third person, Hope Sandoval, one-half of the duo Going Home (Sylvia Gomez completed the duo), was tapped by Smith to replace her as the band’s lead vocalist. In the years that followed, the two became the band’s creative center, with Sandoval’s words breathed to life through Roback’s compositions. Aside from penning lyrics, Sandoval also played percussion and harmonica, while Roback was on guitars. The current line-up also includes Jill Emery on bass, Keith Mitchell on drums, Suki Ewers on keyboards and William Cooper on keyboards and violin.

Mazzy Star released their debut album on 1990 entitled ‘She Hangs Brightly’ under the British record label, Rough Trade. But it wasn’t until the following year when they released a follow-up entitled ‘So Tonight That I Might See’, this time under Capitol Records, that they would gain mainstream music recognition. The album spawned ‘Fade into You’, best remembered as the band’s biggest and only Top 50 single in the US and the UK. It also produced another track, ‘Into Dust’, which only achieved moderate chart success but a greater influence in pop culture consciousness ten years after the album was dropped. It was used in various visual media, from a Virgin Media commercial, to another advert, this time for the Xbox 360 game ‘Gears of War 3’, and in a third season episode of the American drama series, ‘House’ (episode title: ‘Informed Consent’).

In 1996, they released their third effort, ‘Among My Swan’, for which they toured for a whole year. The album was a commercial disappointment but it did leave a mark in the UK Top 40 singles chart with the single, ‘Flowers in December’.

The band went through a long hiatus after wrapping up a European tour in 2000, and during that time, both Sandoval and Roback became busy with other individual projects. Sandoval formed another band, Hope Sandoval & the Warm Inventions, in the same year and she eventually released a solo effort in 2001 entitled ‘Bavarian Fruit Bread’, while Roback penned songs for the Olivier Assayas film, ‘Clean’, in which actress Maggie Cheung starred and also sang the film’s soundtrack.

In a Rolling Stone magazine article dated July 2009, Sandoval denied rumors that the group had disbanded. She went on further to say that they are currently working on their fourth album. In October 2011, they officially dropped ‘Common Burn’, their first single in more than 10 years, accompanied by a B-side entitled, ‘Lay Myself Down’.