All proceeds donated to the Encampment Support Network and Through These Doors.
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Chandra Oppenheim - Vocals
Victoria Cheong - Vocals
Julie Reich - Vocals
Kristina Koski - Keyboard
Jon Schouten - Guitar
Nyles Miszczyk - Bass
Jesse Locke - Drums

Recorded/filmed at Studio Z and various homes in 2020.
Produced by Nyles Miszczyk.
Video edited by Victoria Cheong.
Remixed by Fred Thomas.

“Shut In / Shut Out” was originally written by Chandra Oppenheim in 1983, when she was 14. After her teenage band the Chandra Dimension had disbanded, she met with her longtime collaborators Eugenie Diserio and Steven Alexander of The Dance to demo a new set of songs on a four-track cassette recorder in their NYC apartment. Alongside the drum-machine propelled “Day Without Success” and “They’re All Alike,” which both appeared on Chandra’s recent 2LP reissue from Telephone Explosion Records, she captured the earliest version of this emotionally searching song.

“I don’t have a clear memory of what inspired it,” says Chandra. “My guess is that it was meant to be a message to people who felt they were on the periphery. I was giving advice based on my experiences at middle school of feeling excluded and rejected.”

In a year when we’re all feeling shut in and shut out at various times, Chandra’s teenage lyrics are prophetic. The song extrapolates her own middle school troubles to first picture a state of “being shut out of your dreams,” then projects beyond her personal experiences to envision something more traumatic. Chandra sings about “being shut into the dark” (real or imagined), where you “can’t find your bearings,” or literally “being shut out on the street.” She makes attempts at finding resolution, ultimately proposing throwing it all away, herself included, and starting from scratch.

The original version of the song was rediscovered by Chandra only very recently, on the back of a cassette tape labeled Nothing. “I had seen it many times over the years and thought it must be blank,” she laughs. “This time I decided to pop it in, and there was this demo, a song I had forgotten about and hadn’t heard in decades.” During the next rehearsal with her Canadian band, they started playing "Shut In / Shut Out" but were only able to perform it a few times before the pandemic put live shows and border crossings on pause. As a way to remain collaborative over computer screens, each member recorded and filmed their parts independently, before assembling them into a remote version. The final cherry on top arrived with a dub remix by Fred Thomas. Together even when they’re apart, Chandra’s songs continue to transport over space and time.