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

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's almost better than sex, this LP," he says with evident relish. "Instead of relying on the computer, we just got to be five guys in a room, just kicking ideas around. Hang on, hanging around with a bunch of five guys ain't better than sex! What am I talking about?"

i wish simple minds would get back to the basics of being a pretentious arty post punk band

xp: that's Stone Roses, btw.

I like how basically (ah!), the common evil is "the computer" (and overdubs etc in general).
Does it mean that acts that started with computers and a lot of production never get back to basicss ? Or do they come back to computers after going "natural" ?
Maybe Depeche Mode would be an example of this ?

was Cressa the fifth guy?

Yeah, poor 00s bands that started out trading protools files from opposite coasts, and then got blog buzz and had to figure out how to perform together in the same room

Re: the Beatles and Get Back -- decrepit, aging rocker George Harrison was something like 26 when they recorded it. (Although I guess the spirit of the thread is "a bit older than when they released their early stuff.")

https://www.guitarworld.com/features/interview-kirk-hammett-discusses-metallicas-death-magnetic

Metallica is like the phoenix rising from the ashes. We set everything on fire, and this is what has risen from it—St. Anger being the fire and Death Magnetic being the phoenix.

Since Dylan was in high school rock 'n' roll bands before becoming a folk singer, maybe going electric was his first back-to-basics move.

For Bowie, what about Pin Ups?

Dylan put out a couple of folk covers albums in the 90s, sort of a throwback to his debut record

And for someone his age, doing Sinatra homages is a return to basics of a sort

though he said in interviews that he did not like sinatra growing up and has only grown and appreciation for standards now

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 ... '

Flaming lips did this with embryonic

Also, see every band that records an album at Toerag Studios.

Isn't this every Rick Rubin-produced band, where he tries to get them to pretend they're the band that made the early work that everyone loves? That or stripping everything down to voice and guitar/piano.

Rick Rubin + Metallica:

"They'd fallen into a trap of using the studio more as an instrument and punching in parts to get the perfection they were looking for than they were getting through raw performance power. It was about getting them to not try ideas by editing them together with a machine, but to try playing them in different orders to see what they felt like. And they really ended up getting back to being a band.

"Anytime Lars would want to sit at the computer and try and write, I would insist that he and the band would all play together. (Laughs)

this is a good thing for bands to do
maybe not so good for the quality of music

Brimstead otm

Embryonic was actually good though, at least my memory says so (xposts)

Hmmmmm.

"....well, this time we decided we wanted a certain sound so we went to Chicago and recorded in Steve Albini's studio"

possible overlap with Rubin approach here

Toerag Studio/Liam Watson = UK version to Steve Albini

yeah I'm sure the Manics must have said something like that re: Journal for Plague Lovers (a very literal attempt to plumb their past) xp

Madness vs Toerag :

How did making this album compare to your previous album Oui Oui, Si Si, Ja Ja, Da Da?

“The album that really snapped us out of full-on 80s nostalgia was the Norton Folgate album, which was the album before Oui Oui, Si Si, Ja Ja, Da Da and we made that at this tiny studio in Hackney. It’s a great studio and such a good vibe so we went back, there’s something great about the whole band being in a room together which changes the atmosphere. This album is about the atmosphere and not technology. We tried to get away from computers and back to the songs.”

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