Pitchfork

Sometimes you can go home again. Sometimes you can be just as good, if not better, than you were before. And sometimes (ok, rarely), you can keep apace with your own monumental legend.

Mission of Burma represents the exception and not the rule: a criminally underappreciated band that breaks up too soon, gets inducted into rock sainthood, reunites to play sellout crowds, and releases an album to prove time can actually stand still. Met with rapturous praise, 2004's OnOffOn showed the band was in as fine a form as they were on their classic Signals, Calls, and Marches and Vs.. What makes this all so wondrous is that it was so unexpected; you can't help but feel that Burma could leave it all behind once again and go into another 20-year hibernation. So when they announce they're recording a new album, think of it as a gift.

In emails to Pitchfork, guitarist Roger Miller and tape manipulator/sound engineer Bob Weston report that the band completed mixing on Wednesday night for the as-yet untitled album, due in spring 2006. The next step will be mastering. The album was recorded at Q Division Studios in Somerville, MA, where OnOffOn was made, with the band producing and Weston engineering. (Check out the Q Division website for funny photos of Burma mugging with teenpop sensations the Click Five!)

There is no firm tracklist yet, but Miller writes, "We recorded 15 songs, more than required for a 12-song album. So we don't know what songs will be included, or what the order will be. Possibly the songs "Thirteen," "Twice," and "Spider's Web" (all performed over the last two years in various urban centers) will be included. We recorded four songs we have not yet performed live - this is a first for the band. Listening to the mixes, they sound as completed as the rest of the songs." To this list of potential tracks, Weston adds "Good, Not Great", "Nancy Reagan's Head", and "Ridiculosity". Weston also mentions that cello and viola appear on a few of the songs.

As for the modus operandi of the new record, Miller, with cheeky humor, says the band wishes to move forward in Burma, Part Deux. He writes, "Perhaps ONoffON picked up where 1982's Vs. LP left off. On this next recording (Nash Neesh? Banner of Bleeding Meat? Lure of the Pollinators?), the band is no longer concerned with picking up where we left off in the post-punk era. Song structures, sonic stew, humor and existential angst are all refurbished and laughed about behind their backs." We'll keep you posted on this brewing sonic stew as more details emerge.