Now It’s Overhead Returns After Two Decades with Archival EP, Vinyl Reissues, and a Single Athens Show

Two decades after its last release, the Athens, Georgia project Now It’s Overhead is re-emerging. On September 18, Saddle Creek will issue a five-song digital EP, In The Beginning, alongside the first vinyl editions of the band’s three albums. The EP marks the first new material from Andy LeMaster’s long-dormant indie rock act since 2006’s Dark Light Daybreak.

LeMaster was a frequent Bright Eyes collaborator before his own band became the first non-Omaha signing to Saddle Creek in the early 2000s. Now It’s Overhead released a self-titled debut in 2001, followed by Fall Back Open and Dark Light Daybreak, then went silent as LeMaster focused on production and studio work with Michael Stipe, Azure Ray, and Bright Eyes. The return gathers both old and new: one EP track, “eleven-seven-thirty-five,” was written and recorded around the same time as the first album but never made the cut. “I had forgotten how fully formed it is as a song and a recording,” LeMaster said in a statement, describing the discovery while transferring old tape reels. Another song, “sigh let go,” was written expressly for the EP.

Now It’s Overhead will play a single show on October 10 at the 40 Watt Club in Athens, with Lona opening. It will be the band’s first live appearance since 2007.