THE BLACK WATCH to Release 27th Album THE FUZZY END OF THE LOLLIPOP

THE BLACK WATCH, the long-running Los Angeles indie band led by John Andrew Fredrick, is releasing its 27th album, The Fuzzy End of the Lollipop, on 2 October 2026 via Atom Records.

The band's lineup on the new record includes John Andrew Fredrick on guitars, percussion and vocals; Rob Campanella on guitars and bass; Chandler Fredrick on bass and backing vocals; and Andy Creighton on guitars, bass, drums, strings arrangements and backing vocals.

The band has drawn praise from outlets including Mojo, Shindig!, The Big Takeover and Prog Magazine. Having made seven albums for Atom Records, whom they signed to in 2018, plus one for A Turntable Friend and one for The Bevis Frond's imprint in 2026, THE BLACK WATCH has built what the release describes as a 'dizzying run,' characterized by Mojo as having 'indelible melodies unspooling across well-crafted songs with a mostly big-overcoat Bunnymen/Orange Juice aesthetic,' and by Shindig! as 'pop confections with psychedelic overtones, Beatlesque nudges and literary lyrics (Fredrick's a novelist as well) plus an host of great melodies.'

'One of the most consistent and prolific writers in rock,' said Jack Rabid, Editor-in-Chief of The Big Takeover. 'Twenty-six albums and every one worth getting.'

Fredrick, speaking from his studio in the Angeleno Heights district, pushed back on the 'prolific' label. 'It seems to me that pointing that out is terribly facile if not banal,' he said, 'but songs do seem to pour out of me and I'm, in a not-superstitious way, not sure I'd ever like to find out why. The same thing goes for studio wizardry--where we've spent so much time; I don't think I've touched the mixing board more than three times in thirty-eight years: we work with such skilled producers and engineers, you know. There are so many ridiculously talented ones in our corral, as it were.'

Among those producers is Rob Campanella, formerly of The Brian Jonestown Massacre, who has produced four or so of the most recent TBW LPs and plays bass live. Another is Scott Campbell (Stevie Nicks, Shelby Lynne, Acetone), who has worked with the band on and off since 1991 and produced Led Zeppelin Five, the band's best-selling LP from 2011, reissued in 2020. Andy Creighton, who joined on guitar in 2017, played the majority of the instruments on The Fuzzy End of the Lollipop.

'Andy had a record industry job doing statistics of some sort and he lost it suddenly and had the hardest time finding a new situation, so I thought it'd be advantageous to us both if we hired him to record the new songs,' Fredrick said. 'He works so incredibly fast it's a marvel. It was almost like we were under a mad sort of pressure to get the record done--and yet we weren't under any pressure at all. It must have eventuated from overexcitement, the pace we kept; we just couldn't put a foot wrong, we didn't think,' Fredrick chuckled, 'though that remains, critically, that is, to be seen!'

Fredrick holds a Ph.D. in English literature and taught Freshman Composition at universities including USC, Loyola Marymount, and UCSB, and now teaches tennis for children part-time. He has been vocal about quitting music--and not being capable of quitting--and says that, as a self-described convinced Freudian, he is fascinated by the idea of completion and endings.

'I do think substantial changes are nearing, as it were,' he said. 'our time with Andy Creighton has run its course, but my son Chandler and I and Rob and Rob's drummer brother Andy Campanella are still pretty keen on seeing what we can do.'

'I've declared that The Fuzzy End is really the end of TBW, but I've been wrong before,' he laughed. 'And there are seven or so songs left over from these sessions, so...'

The title of the new, and possibly final, album is taken from Billy Wilder's comedy Some Like it Hot, in which Marilyn Monroe's character 'Sugar Kane' laments that her love life has gotten her 'the fuzzy end of the lollipop.' Fredrick says his band, by contrast, 'has had the sweet end for the duration,' since he formed THE BLACK WATCH in 1987 and rehearsed in after-hours campus classrooms at UCSB, where he taught.

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