Several albums from Matt Mondanile‘s Ducktails project have disappeared from streaming services after sexual misconduct allegations against the solo artist and former Real Estate guitarist were reported earlier this month, Pitchfork notes. Ducktails’ Jersey Devil, released earlier this year via Mondanile’s own New Images label, is no longer available on Spotify or Tidal. His previous two albums (St. Catherine and The Flower Lane), released via Domino Records, are gone from Spotify Tidal, and Apple Music.
This month, SPIN and Pitchfork reported that Mondanile’s 2016 departure from Real Estate came after “allegations of unacceptable treatment of women” came to the attention of his fellow band members. In a subsequent report, seven women made a range of allegations to SPIN against Mondanile that included groping their bodies while they were asleep and forcibly kissing them. “I am endlessly sorry for my inappropriate behavior,” Mondanile wrote in a statement about the allegations that was delivered to reporters via his legal team. “I took advantage of my position as a musician, though I never intended to hurt anyone emotionally or otherwise.” (Read the full statement here.)
According to an anonymous source cited by Pitchfork, the disappearance of the albums was initiated by The Orchard, a distribution company that Ducktails and/or Domino evidently contracted to place his music on streaming services. However, neither the Orchard nor Domino responded to Pitchfork’s reporting on the record. Mondanile’s attorney did not respond to an inquiry from SPIN made last week about the disappearance of St. Catherine from Spotify.
Ducktails is not the first act to have music removed from streaming services after allegations of inappropriate conduct with women. In May, after PWR BTTM singer Ben Hopkins was accused of sexual assault, the band’s albums Ugly Cherries and Pageant were pulled from Spotify et al, the latter by the band’s new—and now former—label Polyvinyl. (Ugly Cherries was subsequently reinstated.) Thanks to the industry’s elaborate chains of ownership and control over music–including the artists, labels, distributors, and streaming services themselves–there are multiple parties that have the power to decide when it is and is not appropriate to make a musician’s work available to the public for listening, with or without the say of the musician in question.
The only Ducktails material that remains available on Spotify is the 2009 album Landscapes, released via the relatively small label Olde English Spelling Bee, and Mirror Image, a single from 2010. A large portion of Mondanile’s catalog–but not the Domino albums–is still available via Ducktails’ Bandcamp page.
