Released in 2024 and featuring a whopping 37-songs, Tracks From The Attic was a deep dive into the eclectic world of David J. A triple LP box set of home demos, the depth and breadth of that collection could be overwhelming for the unacquainted, and would be difficult for even the seasoned fan to know where to delve in. Tracks From The Attic Revisited choses ten of those rattling, skeletal demos and puts flesh on their bones, reworking and transforming these songs, making them three-dimensional like a magician breathing life into a golem. It feels as if David J has returned these songs to the oven, they’re now timed to perfection and served up for your delight and delectation.
Not only have the ten songs comprising Tracks From The Attic Revisited been fleshed out and made whole, they have also been re-sequenced and presented in a different running order. The result is an album that feels fresh and vibrant, two words that also apply to opening track ‘I Wish Those Spacemen Would Come’. What really comes to the fore here is the song’s hook and melody; it has an inherent earworm quality that was buried on the parred back version and required the embellishment to bring it to the fore. If you are familiar with the original songs then this album will allow you to compare and contrast the subtle (and not so) changes that David J makes, and offer a glimpse of his inner processing as he sometimes veers off on unexpected tangents whilst never losing sight of important stuff like song structure.
While David J is certainly not parochial, he’s quintessentially English in an eccentric way and has the ability to peer into the minutiae (and banality) of modern life, offering vivid snapshots of moments in time. It’s an ability few artists have; Ray Davies of The Kinks has the knack, along with Morrissey, and so does David J, and as such ‘If Muzak Be The Junk Food Of Love’ finds a whole kitchen sink drama (think Room At The Top) played out over the course of four glorious minutes. Those who only know David J from his work with Bauhaus might be surprised at the colourful nature of songs like ‘All The Pilgrims’, not only have these tracks been been pulled from the attic, they’ve also been dressed up in their Sunday best and, with the help of a full band, adds adorned with all sorts of glittering accessories.
Whilst much of Tracks From The Attic evidenced an artist in their infancy, Revisited finds David J fully grown and bringing all his experience to bear, creating an album that shines and shimmers. If proof were ever needed that mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow, it can be found here.
- Tracks From The Attic Revisited is released via Independent Project Records on 22nd May 2026.
Track List:
- I Wish Those Spacemen Would Come
- If Muzak Be The Junk Food Of Love
- The Most Beautiful Girls In The World
- Leaning Towards The Falls
- Homo Sapien Blues
- I’ll Put Off Thinking About You For A While
- New Year’s Day
- All The Pilgrims
- Vincent In The Flames
- Punishment By Roses
David J has always understood something that a lot of people never will: some songs do not die, they linger. They gather dust, shadow, old perfume, candle smoke, broken light. They wait in the dark like relics with unfinished business. Tracks From The Attic Revisited does not feel like nostalgia to me. It feels like exhumation. It feels like opening a sealed room in an old house and finding the air still alive with ghosts.
What makes this record extraordinary is that it does not come back to the past in a sentimental way. It drags something out of it, cleans the blood from its face, dresses it in black silk, and lets it speak again with greater elegance, wit, sorrow, and authority. These songs have not been polished into something safe. They still breathe strangely. They still carry the beautiful awkwardness of memory, but now they stand taller, richer, more deliberate, like forgotten pages restored under cathedral light.
There is a rare kind of dignity here. Not the dignity of perfection, but of survival. Of an artist returning to his own abandoned corners and discovering that the bones still sing. That is what I hear in this record: not a revision, but a reckoning. Not a simple revisit, but a haunted flowering. David J turns the attic into a crypt, and then somehow into a chapel. That is not easy to do. Most artists revisit old work to preserve it. Here, it is revived, deepened, and allowed to become even more itself.
This is a beautiful, spectral, deeply intelligent record, and it reminds me that real art never sits still in the grave.