Raised On Candy Premieres ‘Pickle Eyes’ on Retrofuturista
Raised On Candy shares ‘Pickle Eyes’ today in premiere on Retrofuturista, the first single from the New Jersey duo’s upcoming second album.
Artist: Raised On Candy
Release Date: 2026-11-13
Genres: Alternative Rock, Indie Rock, Post-punk
Label: Magic Door Record
Description: Raised On Candy release 'Pickle Eyes' via Magic Door Record Label, the first single from 'Play Marbles on the Turnpike', out November 13th.
Featured image: © Dan Cooper
The two-piece is built around Joe Penna on vocals and guitars and Scotty Imp on drums and cymbals. The pair met through a mutual friend more than twenty years ago, but only began working together after Penna’s earlier band, Transit Belle, ended around 2005. That collaboration became Buteo, which released one album, toured, and split around 2010. Imp kept drumming afterward, notably with Stuyvesant, while Penna stayed away from music until 2022, when he returned to songwriting and eventually formed Raised On Candy.
‘Pickle Eyes’ releases across digital platforms on September 15th. It precedes ‘Play Marbles on the Turnpike’, the duo’s sophomore album, due November 13th through Magic Door Record Label and currently available for pre-order. The record was produced, engineered, mixed and mastered by Ray Ketchem (Guided By Voices, Luna, Elk City) at Magic Door Recording Studio in Montclair, New Jersey, between October 2025 and June 2026, the town both musicians still call home base even as Penna currently lives in Riverside, Connecticut.
Penna described ‘Pickle Eyes’ as being about the reward that comes from approaching unfamiliar people and things with curiosity instead of suspicion, closing with the line “buy the ticket, take the ride.” He compared its structure to a short boardwalk roller coaster, one that builds anticipation, releases it more than once, pauses, then returns for a final surge. Imp said he wrote his drum parts quickly, understanding what they needed to do before he could physically play the fills.
The band’s self-titled debut was recorded with Steve Albini at Electrical Audio and mastered by Matthew Barnhart at Chicago Mastering Service, released in July 2024; it became one of Albini’s final production credits before his death that May. Penna had worked with Albini once before, on a 2002 Transit Belle record.
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