Announcing:
Ida - I Know About You
30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition
​
In January 1996, during a blizzard that shut down New York City, Dan Littleton and his brother Miggy fishtailed a borrowed Hyundai across the Williamsburg Bridge, hauling gear through near-whiteout conditions to Excello Studios in Brooklyn. Inside, Ida, the duo of Dan Littleton and Liz Mitchell, joined by Miggy on drums and Rose Thomson of the band Babe the Blue Ox on bass, spent two weeks recording the songs they'd spent the past year rehearsing, arguing over, and quietly perfecting in their apartment. The result was I Know About You, the 1996 sophomore album that took the hushed intimacy of their debut and taught it how to hold a room.
​
The album takes its title from Ida Machado Schaefer, a sharp, cranky, magnetic woman in her late eighties whom Liz and Dan met on a road trip in the early '90s. That Ida was the kind of person who'd wag a finger and announce "I know about you" before launching into a story that blurring memory, myth, and truth. Her spirit runs through every track: songs that are less diary entries than composites, emotional weather systems built from real fights, real tenderness, and real friendship, refusing to resolve into either love songs or breakup songs.
​
We're proud to bring I Know About You back into the world with in true Numero Group fashion complete with a full disc plus of bonus audio, dozens of photos and liner notes from two people uniquely positioned to tell its story: writer Sara Marcus, who booked Ida's earliest college shows and watched the band up close as a teenager, and Jenny Toomey (Tsunami, Simple Machines), Dan's longtime friend and collaborator, who was there when the songs were still cassette-tape secrets. Together, their notes trace the record from those blizzard-bound sessions to its lasting influence on a generation of quietly devastating indie rock.
​
This might be the only break-up record made by a couple still together you need to own. With its lofted harmonies, pick-pocket rhythms, and wailing-in-the-2AM-distance ambulance guitar solos, Ida's sophomore album leaked out of Brooklyn via detachable car stereo CD players and mixtapes from long distance lovers. Originally issued on the stalwart Simple Machines label, this Numero Group 30th Anniversary Deluxe edition adds half a dozen extras, a wealth of photographic evidence and the incredibly fresh context from Jenny and Sara. Deluxe Edition includes the companion LP I Heard About You. exclusive to our site. Tissues not included.