Matador Teases First New Chavez Music In 20 Years
Nineties indie-rock OGs Chavez never officially broke up, but they’ve remained in a state of limbo for the better part of the past 20 years. Singer/guitarist Matt Sweeney, drummer James Lo, guitarist Clay Tarver, and bassist Scott Marshall have reunited sporadically in the intervening time, but those reunions were never accompanied by any new music. Now, though, that might be about to change: Matador Records, who put out both of the band’s LPs in the ’90s, are teasing the release of a new EP called Cockfighters on Instagram:
When asked about it, Matador played coy, jokingly referencing their recent Car Seat Headrest mess:
If @matadorrecords is pranking the 17 Chavez fans out there, this is expertly cruel. If not, pretty sweet: pic.twitter.com/86k6BuNEdi
— matt sweeney (@theheavyjamz) June 2, 2016
No comment (until after we’ve cleared all the samples) https://t.co/zJnuJtDQyK
— Matador Records (@matadorrecords) June 2, 2016
If Cockfighters is indeed on the way, it would be the first new Chavez material since 1996’s Ride The Fader (not including the 2006 compilation Better Days Will Haunt You. In the years since Chavez’s heyday, Sweeney started Zwan with Billy Corgan and found steady work as a hired gun, working with everyone from Bonnie “Prince” Billy to Johnny Cash to El-P. Lo has worked with VAST and John Zorn, and Marshall and Tarver moved on to film and television.
