New Jersey alt-rock outfit Raised On Candy release their album ‘Play Marbles on the Turnpike’ on November 13th via Magic Door Record Label, highlighted by the album focus track ‘Micromagnon’. This is the band’s second record following their self-titled debut, which they recorded with legendary producer-engineer Steve Albini (Nirvana, Pixies, PJ Harvey, Robert Plant & Jimmy Page, The Breeders, Bush, Cheap Trick).
Raised On Candy is Joe Penna (vocals, guitars) and Scotty Imp (drums, cymbals). Formed from the ashes of the band Buteo, Raised On Candy is the next step in the evolution of their music, weaving old school indie-rock and post-punk nuggets into tasty sonic delicacies. They’ve always called Montclair, New Jersey their home base. Scotty lives there and, while Joe lives in Riverside, Connecticut, he was born in Montclair and grew up in the nearby community of Toms River.
Raised On Candy produced this album together with Ray Ketchem (Guided By Voices, Luna, Elk City, Gramercy Arms, The Dambuilders), who also engineered, mixed and mastered it at Magic Door Recording Studio in Montclair. With an interplay of melodic vocals, slow burn builds and massive hooks, precise rhythms unite with pyro-friendly guitars, transforming chaos into sharp, noisy rock.
This 10-track collection finds the duo expanding their noisy, hook-heavy sound without losing their wonderfully unruly edge. Built to hit hard, this album takes multiple unexpected turns, the effect resonating well after the ride stops.
Following the joyride lead track ‘Pickle Eyes’, the menacing single ‘Red M&M’ sees illusion meet their inevitable, mortal confrontation, with Penna noting “this is about someone who wants what someone else has and is using fear as a means of obtaining it… Before it’s too late, the spell is broken and the tables turn, the underdog eventually rising up and taking out that big ol’ bully once and for all.”
“This record is a no-holds-barred dive into all the things that inspire the two of us. We had no agenda for what we were going to create beforehand other than the fact that nothing is off limits. That’s how we ended up with a record that spans the atmospheric Sabbath-esque opener ‘Red M&M’, pivoting to the poppy clean channel guitars and tribal outro of ‘Micromagnon’, to the twee, shoegazy sounds of ‘Popo Be Kool’,” says Joe Penna.
“As soon as you think you’ve figured out what’s going to happen, you get a wall of feedback that makes up the long opening and tail of ‘The Littlest Lamb’, which then moves into the downright danceable ‘Brutally Blue’, culminating in the alt-metal relentlessness of ‘Something’. We had a blast making this record, running headlong to wherever the music took us.”
Scotty and Joe met over 20 years ago through a mutual friend, but it wasn’t until after the demise of Joe’s band Transit Belle around 2005 that they would collaborate. They formed the band Buteo, which eventually parted ways around 2010 after releasing one album and touring. While Joe pretty much stopped playing music, Scotty continued playing drums in Overlake and Stuyvesant, the latter of which he still plays with today. In 2022, Joe returned to songwriting, leading to the birth of Raised On Candy.
Raised On Candy’s self-titled debut album was recorded with legendary producer-engineer Steve Albini (Nirvana, Pixies, PJ Harvey, Robert Plant & Jimmy Page, The Breeders, Bush, Cheap Trick) at Electrical Audio and mastered by Matthew Barnhart (Superchunk, The New Pornographers, Bob Mould, The Mountain Goats) at Chicago Mastering Service. This would be one of the last records Steve ever worked on before passing away in May, adding a whole new level of emotion to this album, which would be released in July 2024.
On November 13th, ‘Play Marbles On The Turnpike’ is available everywhere, including Spotify, Apple Music and Bandcamp, where the singles can already be found.
TRACK LIST
01 . Red M&M
02 . Micromagnon
03 . Pickle Eyes
04 . Popo, Be Kool
05 . The Hammer And The Nail
06 . The Littlest Lamb
07 . Brutally Blue
08 . Zephyr
09 . Luxury Bones
10 . Something
CREDITS
Music written by Joe Penna and Scotty Imp
Lyrics written by Joe Penna
Joe Penna – Guitar, Vocals, Bass, Synths
Scotty Imp – Drums, Cymbals, Percussion, Piano, Backing Vocals
Produced by Raised On Candy with Ray Ketchem
Engineered, Mixed & Mastered by Ray Ketchem
Recorded at Magic Door Recording, Montclair, NJ (Oct 2025 to June 2026)
Artwork design by Ray Ketchem.
Cover photography by Joe Penna
Released by Magic Door Record Label
Publicity by Shameless Promotion PR