Nellie McKay Announces 'Gee Whiz: The Get Away From Me Demos'

(MPG) Nellie McKay has announced Gee Whiz: The Get Away From Me Demos, an 18-track collection of previously unissued and self-produced demos on 2-LPs presaging McKay's critically acclaimed debut album, out May 9 via Omnivore Recordings.

"I was attracted to the lyrics immediately," says legendary Beatles engineer and producer Geoff Emerick, on the demos for what would become Nellie McKay's 2004 critically-lauded debut album, Get Away From Me. "Her level of maturity at such a young age is astounding. You come across an artist of this caliber once every 10 or 15 years. And I don't do a lot of projects these days unless something really stands out like this did."

Revisiting the album in 2024, reviewers remarked: "... anger and discombobulation reflect the violence happening in her name via her tax dollars... Two decades later, the circumstances and names differ, but the anguish remains the same, as politicians, dictators, and other killers make life hell for ordinary citizens. The word 'brilliant' comes to mind, as does the acknowledgement-the reality-that the average listener can't deal with this many ideas, lyrical and musical." - Pop Matters

"But if older reviewers-mostly men-scoffed at her juvenile assessment of George Bush and world politics, with twenty years of hindsight, we can now say that she was a lot more astute than many of the scholars writing at the time... Nellie McKay-and her debut album-were not perfect. They were better than that. They were real. And in a year that saw seminal punk from Green Day (American Idiot) and seminal hip hop from Kanye (College Dropout, which came out the same day as Get Away From Me) that was enough to make it the best album of the year." -Audiophix

That said, the story really began before the album was recorded. Gee Whiz: The Get Away From Me Demos collects Nellie's recordings which became that landmark album, composed, performed, and produced by Nellie, and sequenced identically to the original record, now on CD, Digital, and as a double-LP.

As a bonus, the CD and digital programs also contain three very early, previously unissued tracks. Mastered by multiple Grammy-winner Michael Graves, these revelatory demos show how complete the album was in its initial stages and brings new insight on the creative process from one of music's most creative artists.

Watch the new video for "Manhattan Avenue" below:

Nellie McKay Releases First LP of Original Music in 13 Years

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