The Lost Record<\/em>, a collection of those songs and their subsequent recordings that comes out Oct. 18 on Baroque Folks Records.<\/p>\n\n\t\u201cThey were just reaching out to me; I went to David Kitay\u2019s studio and we kind of created our own version of something along the lines of what they had done with Tuesday Night Music Club<\/em>,\u201d Hoffs recalls for Billboard<\/em> via Zoom. \u201cIt was, like, meeting together weekly. We would sit around, working on songs. There was one day when Joni Mitchell showed up; I have a recording of David Baerwald, me and Joni singing \u2018Love Potion No. 9.\u2019 She really loved that song.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\tThat\u2019s not one of the 10 tracks on The Lost Record,<\/em> but it would actually be another few years before Hoffs actually recorded those songs \u2014 during 1999, in the garage of her home on Blythe Avenue in west Los Angeles, where she was living with husband Jay Roach and their two young children. \u201cDan Schwartz reached out to me and said, \u2018You want to make some music? Should we continue where we left off from the David Baerwald sessions?’\u201d recalls Hoffs, who had reunited with the Bangles a year prior to record \u201cGet the Girl\u201d for Roach\u2019s film Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me<\/em>. She would tour with the group in 2000, but at the time of The Lost Record<\/em> sessions considered herself in \u201ca non-Bangles chapter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\t\u201cI told Dan, \u2018Yeah, but can we do it in my garage. I have a new baby and I\u2019m kind of staying at home right now.\u2019 He said, \u2018Yeah,\u2019 and we had all these great people \u2014 Jim Keltner, Dan, Brian MacLeod, all these people. It was a true garage band situation, which I loved. The Bangles were formed in the garage of my childhood home, so I\u2019ve had a lifetime of recording in garages.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Lost Record<\/em> hardly sounds slapdash however. The songs \u2014 including the psychedelic-flavored \u201cUnder a Cloud,\u201d which surfaced the Bangles recorded for its 2011 album Sweetheart of the Sun<\/em> \u2014 is dominated by nuanced singer-songwriter fare such as \u201cI Don\u2019t Know Why,\u201d \u201cGrateful,\u201d \u201cNovember Rain,\u201d \u201cAs It Falls Apart\u201d and \u201cWho Will She Be,\u201d and orchestrated pieces like \u201cI\u2019ll Always Love You (The Anti-Heartbreak Song),\u201d \u201cI Will Take Care of You\u201d and \u201cLife on the Inside,\u201d the latter a co-write with Jane Wiedlin and Charlotte Caffey of the Go-Go\u2019s. <\/p>\n\n\t\u201cI grew up in the Bangles but the Go-Go\u2019s had come before that and they had really inspired me, the idea of an all-girl band,\u201d Hoffs notes. \u201cSo to write with Charlotte and Jane was really special. It was just a very creative time. I was reaching out to all the people that I\u2019d known and loved during the \u201980s into the \u201990s. It was like a friend group, a creative friend group.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tLyrically, Hoffs acknowledges that The Lost Album<\/em>\u2018s songs found her grappling with \u201cthis sort of identity crisis. I was a mom and married to a filmmaker and living this so-called grownup-life and finding myself at a crossroads, like, \u2018How do I juggle all this stuff?\u2019 and trying to figure out how to \u2018Do it all.’\u201d The deceptively uptempo \u201cLiving Alone With You\u201d in particular was inspired by how, with Roach\u2019s filmmaking career taking off, the couple \u201cwere like ships crossing in the night.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\t\u201cIt was such a reflective time, a really emotional time,\u201d she remembers. \u201cI think when your emotions are right up at the surface like that it\u2019s a great time to write songs.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tHoffs does not remember why The Lost Record<\/em> became, well lost. \u201cI think it became a little bit fraught,\u201d she says. \u201cThere was some discourse between some of the personalities, I think, and maybe it was because the Bangles wanted to get back together and I felt that I had to park this, somehow, for the greater good. It was so long ago. It was just, like the stars were not aligning or something, and I had to shelve it.<\/p>\n\n\t\u201cBut I\u2019ve always loved these sessions. I had such a fondness for the material and for these recordings because they were so honest and sort of basic and stripped down. It was so much the spirit of creativity in that garage. I\u2019m so glad it\u2019s coming out, finally.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tHoffs is hoping to play some of the songs live; she mentions the possibility of returning to playing regularly at the Largo nightclub, as she\u2019s done in the past. She has other project in motion, too, including a Bangles documentary and second book to follow-up her 2023 novel This Bird Has Flown<\/em>, which Universal has optioned for a film adaptation. And Hoffs is working on a new album of her own to follow last year\u2019s The Deep End<\/em>, which she says will combine new songs with re-recordings of Bangles favorites accompanied by New York\u2019s YMusic string ensemble and should be out next year.<\/p>\n\n\t\u201cI\u2019m bounding around, doing music and my next book and whatever,\u201d Hoff says. \u201cI live for art, and art and music has always driven me. I think when I put my mind to something and have such a passion for it, I can\u2019t stop myself. I\u2019m so grateful I\u2019ve had that ability in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n