Reflecting back upon the spring of 2020, we all recall where we were when the pandemic hit and the lockdown commenced. Faced with the feeling of a never ending night, we recall the glimpses of hope and light that sparked brightly within the tenebrous deluge of a perpetual nocturne. Suddenly doom scrolling on our social feeds took on a more ominous tone with content that became more and more unsettling. We became restless within our increasingly abbreviated routines, reimagining our home spaces to serve as the venue for nearly all of our life endeavors. We felt (and in many ways still continue to feel) long ways away from dear ones both near and far. Kernels of hope were in short supply, not unlike the supply chain fracas of both then and now; our outlook toward new media and emergent artforms was (and still remains) our bastion of excitement and source of inspiration.

It was back then when we were first introduced to Blonder, the alias of Constantine Anastasakis with the release of the Crystal Ball EP. The Long Island artist showcased the manners in which bedroom bops can be amplified to larger tiers, angling the intimacy of chamber pop to fill amphitheaters and arenas alike with expressions of the utmost urgency and aesthetic exhibitions depicting emotive immediacy. Having cut EPs with Porches' Aaron Maine, Loren Humphrey, Waylon Rector and more; Anastasakis announces the debut Blonder album Knoxville House recorded with John MacCallum and Maxwell Drummey during the fall of 2020 in East Nashville. The result is a cleverly crafted unbottling of necessary catharsis. It stands as a mirror reflection of the times. It is all the rat in a cage rage you can fit into a autumn-to-winter flannel where latent COVID-era grievances are belted out by way of bloodletting, blistering grunge-core chords.

Which brings us to the world debut of “Heavy”. An all too familiar tale about what happens when the best laid plans get turned sideways and the entire world feels progressively stranger and stranger by the day. The affectionate style found in previous Blonder works is traded for lead weight kettle bells and barbed wire guitar, blazing with wailing progressions in efforts to make sense of the modern conditions by fighting chaos with the cool craft of electric clamor. "Heavy" is the sound of living in a world that is spinning wildly out of control off its axis. It is the sound of seeking greater truths in the face of rampant campaigns of mass misinformation, living through the social and civic upheavals of our times and finding a higher foundation, security, solace and credence to believe in. Blonder surveys what happens when things fall apart, moving the lens ambiguously from the macro to the localized and internalized perceptions of experience in creative attempts to encapsulate the processes of navigating through extraordinary times. Constantine accomplishes this by emulating the jagged, serrated edges found in the 90s alt rock arts of danger worship that casts the caution of safety to the fickle breeze where the abyss of instability laps like flames at your feet from the smoldering embers of scorched earth. "Heavy" is a snapshot of the world that we know as a collective of souls striving to make sense of entropy during a time when the laws of inertia feel completely off the scales of metric measurement.

Picking up where the video for "Karma Police" left off, director Hunter Airheart's visual delivers a minimalist and menacing dose of alienation reflective of our current era. Running frantically, bouquet in hand, bathed in light by the beams of a vehicle's headlamps with a fork in the road looming in the background — Constantine serves as the proverbial rabbit in the world’s headlights. It begins with Constantine slowly strolling toward the source of light, then sprinting forward and later breathlessly making a break for the fork in the road with the unseen vehicle in pursuit. The video offers senses of mystery, a midnight Romeo romanticism where the Blonder odyssey we witness is like observing a gallant moth's complex connection to the allure of luminants.

Blonder’s Constantine Anastasakis shared some candid thoughts on the making of the album Knoxville House and the new single “Heavy”:

I found myself writing in a friend's unoccupied Airbnb/Studio in Knoxville, Tennessee during the early stages of COVID and the political tumult and riots that later ensued during the summer of 2020 — that thing in the air was really frenetic, psycho, angry and altogether about a massive paradigm shift in culture.

Yearning for something in my own music that felt real, direct and visceral, Nirvana's In Utero, King Krule's Man Alive! & unreleased Porches demos spun nonstop on the 14 hour drives from New York to Tennessee, all of which became inspirations for the new LP.

The single "Heavy" felt so emblematic of the record and that feeling for me — whether it was a heaviness of the zeitgeist, or a heaviness romantically, or a heaviness about my career. In the most unique way, I felt like I knew what I wanted to express and it was okay if it was ugly and raw. In a way, it needed to be and needed to be maybe wrong for Spotify, wrong for bedroom pop playlists, but still had something undeniably infectious about it. The whole time I was making this record I was saying to myself strange is the only thing that’s still new.

Blonder’s album Knoxville House will be available February 11 via Cool World Records.