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

I'm sure there is a Chris Frantz quote about getting back to basics before Little Creatures was released. Google (or my memory) is failing me.

U2 find it impossible to make an album that sounds like that, which is the funniest thing about it.

(xxxposts)

someone mentioned Stipe but i was gonna say there's at least a couple R.E.M. records that qualify for this, right?

"back to basics is the death of romance" --Stephin Merritt

bill wyman's bass is v cool

someone mentioned Stipe but i was gonna say there's at least a couple R.E.M. records that qualify for this, right?

― alpine static, Wednesday, March 7, 2018 9:24 PM (fifty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah that quote Mookieproof posted refers to Monster (as Turrican guessed) but I automatically assumed it was Accelerate...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6gKe9Fr2ok

go into the studio and make a record like a normal band
go into the studio and make a record like a normal band
go into the studio and make a record like a normal band
go into the studio and make a record like a normal band
go into the studio and make a record like a normal band
go into the studio and make a record like a normal band
go into the studio and make a record like a normal band

Ok I Googled "back to their roots" in Goog News and here's what I found:

Of Mice & Men go back to their roots on new material -
“I think what we’re doing right now, which is the most important thing that we can, is really just honing in on the elements of what makes our music sound like our music.”

25 YEARS AGO: BON JOVI RESTART THEIR CAREER WITH ‘KEEP THE FAITH’ -
“We needed to find ourselves individually,” he said. “The Bon Jovi situation was extremely successful, and I was very happy to be in a band of that stature, but there was almost nothing left to write about at that point — we were all just so tired and so burnt out. All we were writing about was bein’ on the road and bein’ in a hotel room and bein’ lonely and talkin’ to your girlfriend on the phone. They miss you and you miss them — that was what our lives were about at that time.
“So to actually take a step back and see what was happening in our lives gave us some more stuff to write about. Plus, all of a sudden I was working with people like Eric Clapton and Tony Levin from Peter Gabriel, and Jon was workin’ with Elton John and Jeff Beck, so workin’ with all these different artists gave us different influences, which we brought back to Bon Jovi. It made it fresh and brand-new, and we were excited to be with each other again."

Every huge artist has their "Keep the Faith"

Future historians will explain all culture - indeed, all of history - primarily through the lens of Bon Jovi's discography.

John F. Kennedy was the American presidency's "New Jersey."

"The Winter's Tale" is Shakespeare's "Keep the Faith."

The Ford Model T is the "Slippery When Wet" of cars.

Stonewall Jackson's famous flank march at the Battle of Chancellorsville was the Confederacy's "Have a Nice Day."

We needed to find ourselves individually
We needed to find ourselves individually
We needed to find ourselves individually
We needed to find ourselves individually
We needed to find ourselves individually

actually my favorite Bono-ism on this front is referring to Achtung Baby as "the sound of four men chopping down the Joshua Tree."

suck on that, eno

There's some serious g-droppin' goin' on in that Bon Jovi quote

also rofling at Puffin's history lesson through the lens of the BJ discography

Never said by Yes, Tangerine Dream, or Gentle Giant.

This thread should also have room for quotes in the spirit of "we went into the studio with 300 new songs and in the end only 14 made the cut"

ahah, I have always hated these comments.
Especially when you hear how shitty the remaining 14 tracks are, most of the times... makes you wonder what the other 286 sounded like !

Animal Collective: 'We wrote our new album as a rock band'

Asked how it differed from their previous albums, Weitz said: “We all moved back to Baltimore, the last few records we’ve written apart and by sending each other stuff. This time we all wanted to write in the same room together. We went back to our roots and we got a little practice space in this barn on Josh’s [Dibb – fellow band member] mum’s property and it was like being a garage band again.”

This one we wrote as a rock band in a room and we wanted to record it that way.”

and yeah, the original "back to basics" move was the Beatles' Get Back sessions, surely.
Or maybe the Stones' Beggars Banquet, actually.

^^ bonus points for "a barn" xpost

and yeah, the original "back to basics" move was the Beatles' Get Back sessions, surely.

― AlXTC from Paris

wasn't this inspired by the Basement Tapes?

While the band's two albums for Sony have been rockers, Ness says Social Distortion plans to turn it up a notch for its next studio effort.

"I'm about half way through writing the new album and on it I'm going to stray away a little bit from the country and blues influence and I'm digging back to that late '70s feel. It's a personal thing I gotta do. I just want a real hard-edged, stake-our-claim, back-to-our-roots record.

"It's like, 'Hey, you flannel-wearing, pony-tail, pierced-nose kid. I took beatings so you could dress the way you dress and we were doing this long before any of these other people were doing it,"' says Ness.

not an album but an early back-to-basics move: Elvis' 1968 comeback special

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...

the unspoken truism here presumably being that layman's-terms descriptions of the recording process are fundamentally dull

like, I'm struggling to think of a plausible summary of one which wouldn't invoke some form of music biz cliche

suspect the audience that things like the OP are written for is now small and stubborn enough that if this kind of thing got excised from the 'big band with new album' narrative entirely they would be sore about it just because it's a thing that one expects to read

ouch sorry : but it wasn't really a return to bacics, was it ?

Some bands get back to basics differently than others.

"For us, we wanted to go back to our roots. So we said, yeah, let's go to a house like the Stones and Led Zeppelin used to do. Let's just do our own project and have some fun.

"So, we rented a house in Spain, a villa overlooking the sea, and that allowed us to make a really free sounding record. I mean, on Hysteria, I remember spending a month recording just one guitar riff. On Slang the emphasis was on the song, the inspiration for it, the vibe.

"We wanted it to have more the feel of classic albums by bands we liked, like the Stones or Zeppelin."

Also, wondering about artists with a very strong and long back catalog but who NEVER did the "back to basic" move : Prince (I'm not too sure about his 90s output) ? Bowie ? Stevie Wonder ?

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

Wasn't Hours Bowie's Back to Basics?

I'm sure Bowie did this, he tried virtually everything else post-Scary Monsters.

Was Tin Machine not back to basics? I don't know, I try not to think about Tin Machine tbh.

Tin Machine is "let me try just being a member of a band," not "back to basics."

And how's life is right about the different styles of "back to basics." Renting a villa in Spain is not "basics."

Indeed the Grohl example is actually more on point. Not to be Cap'n Save-a-Dave, but I think they did do a fair amount of ridiculously luxurious home recording for a while - bringing a mobile rig to his house. There is a documentary n shit about them recording at home and then taking a dip with their kids an all, but at a very high level of pro quality, not grungey in the slightest. So for them, going to a studio might constitute "basics."

Globally famous bands do play club shows, but IME they rarely play at 1:15 AM to just their boy/girlfriends and the bar staff, for nothing but drink tickets. THAT would be a daring return to "basics."

He is looking forward to working with his group Tin Machine, which will get back to recording its second album when the tour ends later this year.

It's back to basics time, Bowie insists: "I need revitalisation, I needed to get small. I needed to do what I do best and that is be excited about music. That is when I do my best work, when I am excited about something unusual or obscure or out of the way."

Slam dunk.

"For the first time in a long time I'd actually taken the trouble to write the songs before we went into the studio," he says. "So I spent a lot of time crafting them in a very reactionary, old-fashioned, traditional way. I just wrote proper songs, applied myself to them and the lyric, and kept them extremely simple.

"When I went into the studio, I had positive ideas of how the songs were to sound which is unusual, especially for the '90s. Just about everything has been done in the studio in more of an experimental fashion, much like the middle to late '70s. The last time I wrote songs per se was the early '80s."

(several years later for Hours)

https://www.deseretnews.com/article/932737/Rush-gets-back-to-basics-with-Vapor-Trails-album.html

"We wanted to return to the basics with this album," Lifeson said.

"I spoke with Geddy about that and he was keen to the idea. It was a conscious effort to downplay the keyboards this time. We all agreed that an organic approach to the music would be a good thing this time around."

I like that within a few utterances of "back to basics" there is generally a delightful tautology, couched in humblebrag. We all felt compelled to start playing music again that was music played our way. The band got back together and we became a band again. The goal of making this album was to just put together a collection of songs, the best we could write and maybe the best we've ever written.

Also, wondering about artists with a very strong and long back catalog but who NEVER did the "back to basic" move : Prince (I'm not too sure about his 90s output) ? Bowie ? Stevie Wonder ?

And I'm guessing there's some acts who've pulled this stunt more than once.

some of these quotes are hilarious, good work guys

I think the Dylan Back to Basics album is John Wesley Harding, but probably he would be too cool to give that type of quote

I do seem to recall him saying something about how Basement Tapes is how recordings should be done, barefeet on a carpet with cats running around or smth

hmm oh well I guess then in the 90s he did release GAIBTY and World Gone Wrong:

“That’s why I recorded two LPs of old songs, so I could personally get back to the music that’s true for me.”

ahah ok for Bowie ! I'm not too familiar with his post "Scary Monsters" output either !
Like for the "we had 300 songs" quotes, I wonder if the acts who say these "back to basics" things really believe them or if they feel and know it's ridiculous/cliché/bullshit !

"We've been expanding our sound a lot in the last few records as far as using more atmospherics and more synthesizers in opening up the sound, which is great, but there is something about the very early Deftones records that is just very stripped-down and raw, just four guys in a room making a racket, and that is something that I miss.

"If I were to make a Deftones record right now, it would be just the drums, the bass, the vocal and the guitar and just us making the most obnoxious music we can make."

^I don't think this is the way it turned out for the subsequent Deftones album.

Luzier and the original band members - lead singer Jonathan Davis, guitarist James "Munky" Shaffer and bassist Reginald "Fieldy" Arvizu - worked with producer Ross Robinson on the CD, the group's ninth studio effort. Robinson oversaw Korn's early releases, including its self-titled 1994 debut and its 1996 pop breakthrough, "Life Is Peachy."

For the new album, Robinson stripped Korn's sound.

"When he got involved, I got excited," Luzier said. He and the band, along with the metal group Disturbed, will co-headline the Music as a Weapon V tour, which stops at the Ted Constant Convocation Center in Norfolk on Tuesday. "It was like a family reunion for them, because he started it all with them. He had the idea, 'Hey, let's get rid of all the fancy studio stuff. You guys are a little bit too comfortable.' He wanted to go back to where it all started, which is in a 12-by-13 room with no Pro Tools or electronics. He wanted to go back to just four guys in a room, jamming."

Also who's the next big act who will do it ! I guess T. Swift is very close...

“We’re not going to make bedroom Styx records, we’re going to do it right. The way it should be with five guys looking at each other and feeding off of that energy that can only be created by five guys in a room.

“Passing files around, yeah we’ve done that for various things, but it’s not the way to make a Styx record. That magic that’s lost now in most recordings is you don’t have that thing that happens when people rub against each other. We all know how to make great records and how to do that, and it costs money.”

"We are a band who have toured a lot and, even if I say it myself, we're pretty good at it, and we've always been pretty good at not only getting stuff translated onto stage but actually making it better, because inherently I think Simple Minds are a live band.

"For this album the approach to the recordings was like the early days. It was band-like, with everyone in the same room as opposed to lots of computers, and because the album was recorded almost in a live way it meant that the translation was much more immediate.

"We then used the computers to enhance it and stuff, but fundamentally it was four or five guys in a room playing, and that is what it is live."

“It was old-school: everyone in the same room, no click tracks, no B.S.,” Joyce said. “It’s rare to do a record like that these days. They’re a dying breed.”

He's obviously unfamiliar with this thread.

Not quite aging (yet), but -

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/mar/17/big-thief-adrianne-lenker-bright-future-solo-album-interview

Disconnecting from technology was crucial for the process. “The energy of a cell phone or a computer does something to the energy field,” says Lenker. “It can be this thing that almost latches on to your eyeballs and sucks you in and takes part of your soul or something.” The album’s recording process was fully analogue: recorded on tape, mixed on an analogue console and cut directly on to the acetate used to make records. Everyone recorded together, not wearing headphones; they left not having listened back to a single take, trusting that Weinrobe had captured everything.

sounds kinda awesome

what's it gonna taaaaaaaaaaaaake

record directly onto the WAV file you'll upload to spotify u cowards

jk it does sound kinda awesome

“‘A La Sala,’ I used to scream it around my house when I was a little girl, to get everybody in the living room; to get my family together. That’s kind of what recording the new album felt like. Emotionally there was a desire to get back to square-one between the three of us, to where we came from–in sonics and in feeling. Let’s get back there.” - Laura Lee Ochoa

Stereogum on Pearl Jam:

Spurred on by recording his 2022 solo LP Earthling with the young super-producer Andrew Watt, Eddie Vedder had an idea. He told Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament, Mike McCready, and Matt Cameron to come down to Watt’s studio in LA, with a “Let’s just see what happens” kind of attitude. In a complete reversal from their past several recordings, the five members of Pearl Jam gathered in a room, banged out ideas together, and wrote a host of songs in a matter of days.

A+

The album’s recording process was fully analogue: recorded on tape, mixed on an analogue console and cut directly on to the acetate used to make records.

The Night Dreamer label does direct-to-disc recordings, mostly by jazz acts but also by some others (Seu Jorge, Seun Kuti & Egypt 80). They're generally really good.

re-read the foo fighters' concrete and gold wiki article the other day and it has quite an enterprising paragraph

The band describe the album's sound as where "hard rock extremes and pop sensibilities collide",[17] comparing it conceptually to being "Motorhead's version of Sgt. Pepper"[18] or "Slayer making Pet Sounds".[19] Explaining further, the album's sound was described as combining heavy guitar riffs with "lush harmonic complexities".[20] Hawkins added that in contrast to their mindset in the previous albums going to "let's make a good rock n' roll record", Concrete and Gold was "the weird record."[21] Grohl described the title track, which features the vocals of Shawn Stockman from Boyz II Men, as sounding like "Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd" and explaining that they "built a choir" out of Stockman's vocal takes, overdubbing them so it sounds "like 40 vocals stacked".[11] Hawkins described the album as their "most psychedelic" and "weirdest" sounding.[10] Writers described the album's overall sound as hard rock[22][23] and progressive rock.[24][25]

still sounds like their previous albums alas

From that Adrianne Lenker article upthread

Everyone recorded together,

got it

not wearing headphones

uhhh...kind feel like the authenticity goal-posts are getting moved on me

they left not having listened back to a single take, trusting that Weinrobe had captured everything.

what?

We went back to basics. Didn't even take our guitars out of cases. It was like when we started, just four guys sitting in a room not playing anything.

If we need to, we’ll miss soundcheck and just sit under a tree and talk for four hours, because we can’t play music together unless we feel connected. We therapise one another.”

It does seem like if Big Thief wanted to pivot to making podcasts, their fans would be fine with that.

Recording in the same room without headphones is super nice (ie no iso booths, hearing your live sound, plenty of bleed, just like rehearsing), I get that. But yeah they lost me at not listening to any takes. I assume that means not breaking the momentum by going into the control room, and going back later to select takes and mix?

Our bass player just left in the middle of the album and walked outside and got hit by a bus.

Didn't want to jeopardize the album by "overplaying"

xpost re:foos-
i'm so pleased that the phrase "pop sensibilities" is still being used in 2024. i also really like sarcasm.

More like Poop sensibilities

Just five guys in a room, three of them high, arguing and being passive aggressive.

fwiw, sounds like it was 2017 (and the idea sounds cool! even if the results weren't?)

I love this thread so much, every revive is a gift

Just five guys in a room, three of them high, arguing and being passive aggressive.

― President Keyes, Tuesday, April 2, 2024 12:45 PM (thirty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I would love to see more big time bands be this honest in the promotion cycle/press release

I'm checking out that FF album... it def. (and sadly) doesn't sound like "Slayer making Pet Sounds," ha ha

Motorheadpepper?

We wanted to go back to sick bass

"Good Decapitations"

I love this thread so much, every revive is a gift

I Just Wasn’t Made For This Sacrifice

God Only Knows (How Much He Hates Us All)

Summer Days... And Summer Nights!

(I know that's Megadeth, but it's all I got)

this is only thread adjacent but all the same, Shabaka Hutchings joins the recording without headphones cadre:

So for instance, one of the things that I did was have everyone not use any headphones or separation, and tell everyone that we want to be playing as if it’s the introduction or the outro of any particular song. We want to hold that space. Just to get them into a mold of how they engage together.

https://www.stereogum.com/2258591/shabaka-hutchings-perceive-its-beauty-acknowledge-its-truth/interviews/qa/

The album’s recording process was fully analogue: recorded on tape, mixed on an analogue console and cut directly on to the acetate used to make records.

And 99.9% enjoyed by people listening on laptop speakers through a digital interface

OTM