Blonder’s $5 EP was written in the throes of a relationship everyone else wanted to be perfect but just wasn’t meant to be, each of the six songs is a “distinct world,” says the singer-songwriter born Constantine Anastasakis. “It’s about romance and sex, but I want people to see the whole thing.” Today, he is streaming the track “In and Out.”

The EP was Recorded to two-inch tape at Los Angeles’ legendary Sound City Studios. “I was thinking about killing myself, don’t you mind?” infuses Blonder’s acute awareness of the emotional subtleties of relationships: “You know just how I’m doing but you ask me anyway,” he drawls to close out the album, noticing with a dry eye the faded leather jacket his former lover left behind.

Growing up in Long Island, Blonder was first exposed to music through his older sister, starting with a visit to Jim Morrison’s grave grave at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, France. I memorized all the Doors’ songs,” he recalls. “I would sing them with my sister for her friends.” Torn between his parents’ careers – an artistically minded mother who worked at a blue chip art gallery and a florist father who firmly believed in stable careers – Constantine escaped the city whose artists he admired, sequestering himself in Vermont with a friend from college. After teaching himself to play the guitar a few years later – and Ableton by sampling French jazz and setting it to a beat – Blonder survived a bicycle accident only to endure “the worst pain of his life.” Once again bound to a space smaller than his ambitions, he crafted hundreds of songs that would later shape the glowing coals of heartbreak he mined for $5.

“That’s what characterizes music for me in a huge way,” says Blonder, speaking as much to his universally emotive, gorgeous introduction to the world as to the New York scenes that influenced him. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and because it’s art it can be more special than an ordinary day, or an ordinary moment.”

Blonder Tour dates:
With Day Wave

6/1 Portland OR – Mississippi Studios
6/2 Seattle WA – Barboza
6/3 Vancouver BC – Biltmore
6/5 Calgary AB – High Fi Club
6/7 Minneapolis MN – 7th Street Entry
6/8 Chicago IL – Lincoln Hall
6/10 Toronto ON – Horseshoe Tavern
6/11 Montreal QC – Ritz
6/12 Boston MA – Sinclair
6/15 New York NY – Bowery Ballroom
6/16 Philadelphia PA – Foundry
6/17 Washington DC – Rock & Roll Hotel
6/19 Nashville TN – Exit/In
6/20 St Louis MO – Off Broadway
6/21 Kansas City MO – Riot Room
6/23 Denver CO – Larimer Lounge
6/24 Salt Lake City UT – Urban Lounge
6/27 San Diego CA – Casbah
6/28 Los Angeles CA – El Rey
6/29 Santa Barbara CA – SoHo Music Club