Tony Molina Announces New Album In the Fade, Releases Lead Single “The Last Time”

Bay Area guitar-pop maverick Tony Molina has announced In the Fade, his first new album under his own name in four years, coming Aug. 12 via Summer Shade, a new Run for Cover Records imprint curated by Madison Woodward (Fury, Object of Affection). At 18 minutes, the record is Molina’s longest yet, and it “offers something from every phase of his catalog, almost like a Tony Molina greatest hits, except with all new songs,” per press materials. Molina went about fitting those different sounds together exactly how you’d expect: “The main thing I was trying to tie everything together with was just really good melodies for the entire record, all the way through,” he says.

Lead single “The Last Time” evokes early, Dissed and Dismissed-era Molina more than it does the lighter touch of his last album, 2018’s Kill the Lights. Thin Lizzy-esque guitar harmonies bookend the track, 84 seconds of fuzzed-out power-pop in which Molina’s narrator swears off a flawed relationship, but harbors doubts about what kind of life he’ll lead without it—all conveyed in the space of a single four-line verse. ”’Cause when I tell her that I need her / Will she still judge me for who I am?” he wonders over power-chord thrum, his uncertainty soon supplanted by the song’s return to riff-rock nirvana.

Molina’s In the Fade sessions began in March 2020, just days before Covid hit, and continued off and on for “a long stretch of time,” as the pandemic permitted. Molina recorded the album alongside his longtime friend Jasper Leach, as well as Bay Area engineers Jack Shirley and Bart Thurber, working at their respective studios. Molina’s The Lost Days bandmate Sarah Rose Janko (Dawn Riding) sang vocal harmonies on multiple tracks—a first for a Molina solo album—while Leach contributed “all over the record.”

Listen to “The Last Time” below, and see the details of In the Fade further down.

In the Fade Tracklist:
01. Aye Aye My My (Into The Fade)
02. The Last Time
03. Not Worth Knowing
04. Leave This Town
05. Don’t Be Far
06. Song For Friends (Slight Return)
07. Ovens Theme Pt. 4
08. Fuck Off Now
09. I Don’t Like That He
10. All I’ve Known
11. Burn Everyone
12. Four Sided Cell
13. Years Ago Pt. 2
14. Fluff

In the Fade Art: