Aging rock act on new album: This time we wanted to go back to the basics

Four Guys In A Room is definitely a thing...

But Copeland says that was always the plan – to record an album like rock bands always did in the days before electronic files made worldwide collaboration as easy as hitting send on an email with a digital track attached.

“It was all recorded old-school, four guys in a room blasting away at each other,” he says. “And I think you can hear it on the tracks. I think there’s an X factor you get from mutual inspiration.”

It’s very similar to how he, Sting and Andy Summers recorded most of their songs in the Police in the ’70s and ’80s, he says.

four guys in a room blasting away at each other

No-one's recorded like that since 1962, of course.

Or, at least, none of these guys ever have.

Craig: We recorded it in the Sierra Nevada mountains of Spain. It was a wonderful setting. We couldn't help but make brilliant music. It united us as a band again. It allowed us to be who we are as a band. Sometimes, George tries to bring in other writers or we try new technology and we try this and that. But up in the mountains, our producer just stripped it all away and we got back to basics. It's how it worked when we were kids and it really worked brilliantly for us on this record.

Moss: Putting out a new album is really hard but we can't keep mucking out "I'll Tumble 4 Ya" in our 50s. The thing I like about the album is it's quite fresh. It was recorded well. It was done the old fashioned way—just four guys in a room just bashing it out. Nowadays, you've got computers and stuff. This was all played live, no programming or anything.

... back to basics, four guys in a room, bashing not blasting, no computers.

A critical part of these features comes in the preface, where the interviewer gets in on the hype and suggests that the new album might be the band's best since Some Girls.

i enjoy it when that kind of hype is used a bit misleadingly, like "this is their best album in twenty years" and then of course they released an album twenty years ago and...one other album in between that and the new one.

I like every Crazy Horse story that is them begging Neil NOT to go back to basics on this one.

"We'd been writing basically to computers for a while. So Nick came in, and he was like 'No computers, we're just going to jam, we're going to do it like a band.' And I'm like, 'This guy's outta here' in my head, because it's much more hard work. But you can really tell on the album that we worked hard on it. It's got a feel about it. It sounds like a band."

In fact, The Serenity of Suffering has been described as Korn's heaviest album in a while, and the band says the guitar work has a lot to do with it, as well as the tone.

http://wgnradio.com/2016/04/09/musician-bob-mould-is-getting-back-to-basics/

seems pretty clear what all these bands need to do is not record an album, but go hang out with daryl hall in his TV studio music barn and bash out shockingly good dad-rock covers of two of their old classics and one hall & oates track. pretty much foolproof afaict.

then spend 30 tightly edited minutes with Daryl as he repairs an old door.

I feel like Presence kind of fills this whole for LZ with its couple of throwbacks. But I don’t think they would be cheesy enough to announce it as such.

^^Page has said in recent years that he and Bonham were discussing a back to basics approach for the obviously never realized first 80s Zep album.

the 1980 europe tour was a "back to basics" tour! (and it was terrible.)

^^Page has said in recent years that he and Bonham were discussing a back to basics approach for the obviously never realized first 80s Zep album.

― ...some of y'all too woke to function (C. Grisso/McCain),

Totally understandable plan after soldiering through a 5th take of the synth soufflé of carouselambra

Let’s not start saying things we’re bound to regret later on.

I feel like Presence kind of fills this whole for LZ with its couple of throwbacks. But I don’t think they would be cheesy enough to announce it as such.

― calstars, Thursday, March 8, 2018 6:09 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Presence is the way it is because the band was nearly dead, exhausted from drugs and death and injury, Plant literally singing from a wheelchair, Page smacked out of his gourd. It's also an intensely weird and gloomy album and hard for me to say "back to basics" a) because what the hell is basics for such an omnivorous band and b) it literally starts with perhaps the apex of their Wagnerian epics "Achilles Last Stand"

let's not forget "this is my most personal record yet"

And the "maturity album" (which might be a bit weird for an ageing rock act...)

The maturity back to basics most personal album is a narrow category.

feel like Weezer are always half assing this look now with the "White Album" "Green Album" "Black Album" always hearkening back to their one good record that everyone liked

Sea Change was the first album to come to mind

"...we felt we really trusted our instincts with this one"
" (noted instrumentalist) wasn't into overdubs"
"...many of the songs were first or second takes...there's something honest in that approach"

Also, wondering about artists with a very strong and long back catalog but who NEVER did the "back to basic" move

Ryuichi Sakamoto perhaps. I don't think Todd Rundgren ever really made a "return to 70s" record though I think maybe Liars could qualify. XTC always moved forward - Wasp Star is kind of an exception here but that one doesn't really sound like any XTC album before it either. Autechre straight up said they would never ever do this, mainly because it's impossible given the way they work

yeah, I thought about the Basement Tapes but how was it wasn't really a return to bacics, was it ? It wasn't Dylan going back to his folk songs alone with his guitar...

― AlXTC from Paris

as good an explanation as any for why the "basement tapes" don't suck but every single "back to basics" record it inspired does

Helps when you record with an act that is essentially Rock Band: 1857

whatever their flaws I find it tough to imagine Radiohead claiming a new record as a "back to basics" type deal

helps too that basement tapes was a bunch of stoners having fun without the intention to release that stuff

Oh that's definitely going to happen one day. (xp)

the basement tapes are a bunch of funky, cryptic little goofs, dylan going back to the "basics" would have been serious folk songs

They Might be Giants seem to do this a lot. I feel like Flood is mentioned in every press release they do - ah, we're back to that studio, we're using the same producer, we're writing the songs the same way where it's just the two of us, etc. etc. It's a bit odd since their songwriting never really changed much but kinda shrewd I guess, you gotta make a living. In fact I suspect a lot of this is just that, stuff you just say because you're anxious that you don't sell the amount of units that you used to. I wonder how many of these albums actually do sound like something they would have put out 20-30 years ago. Maybe the last few OMD records.

Yeah and that Stipe quote about Monster - they weren't claiming it was like Murmur or anything. I don't think any REM album really is a "back-to-basics" move like that (not that I listened to the last couple)

Also, wondering about artists with a very strong and long back catalog but who NEVER did the "back to basic" move

Leonard Cohen never went back, other than going from sketch-like songs/production on Ten New Songs and Dear Heather into more fully realized ones once he returned to touring.

Ryuichi Sakamoto perhaps

He literally has an album called "Back To The Basics".

I liked the recent acoustic Robyn Hitchcock album that was designed to be in the style of the 60’s folk albums he grew up listening to, but not necessarily like anything he’d made earlier.

Speaking of the Fabs on the roof, the actual set is so weird innit? Get Back FOUR times, nothing off the first 10 albums..

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/the-beatles/1969/apple-corps-rooftop-london-england-53d6f3ad.html

Sea Change was the first album to come to mind

which previous era of heavily-orchestrated songs recorded in a big expensive studio was Beck reverting to here

He literally has an album called "Back To The Basics".

that just refers to the fact that it's solo piano, part of his stripped-back modern classical phase. it's not really a "return" to anything in his catalogue

Yes, but a lot of these aren't returns to anything - how many of these bands have ever recorded anything as four guys in a room with no overdubs blah blah blah?

Jarvis Cocker's 'Further Complications' is one of these, annoyingly so as he'd never made that sort of music before. IMO it's the worst album he's made, solo or in a group.

Leonard Cohen never went back, other than going from sketch-like songs/production on Ten New Songs and Dear Heather into more fully realized ones once he returned to touring.

Recent Songs was intentionally a back-to-basics acoustic record after the full Spector sound of Ladies' Man.

Sea Change was the first album to come to mind

which previous era of heavily-orchestrated songs recorded in a big expensive studio was Beck reverting to here

I guess I meant the pivot to "personal" material and a turn away from his shtickier side but maybe not the best example

Mgmt might qualify for this. By the bands own admission the new songs are meant to make people dance again, more in line with their earlier hits. But then not sure how much the album is back to basics

There’s a difference to me between returning to the style that people liked more and going ‘back to basics’ which is a much more authenticity based move

back to basics shd only be used when ppl go back to, like, gregorian chants.

Or do they come back to computers after going "natural" ?
Maybe Depeche Mode would be an example of this

surely the electronic version of this is : 'we dug out all our old analogue equipment/modular synths for this album ... '

Not following a "natural" release, but... 'All You Need is Now' certainly makes this move, down to making sure there's the "Girls on Film" one, "The Chauffeur" one, etc... a wholly unnecessary self-flagellation for the fan uproar over 'Red Carpet Massacre'.

Dylan's "back to basics" was incontrovertibly the World Gone Wrong / Good As I Been to You double - obscure folk standards, Dylan + guitar, recorded in his garage. Laid the foundation for Time Out of Mind - "Love and Theft" - Modern Times so, time well spent.

Time wasted actually listening to the fuckers though.

I love them