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

Lol

One side-note about the recording of Animals was that the band had just finished building Britannia Row studio and basically started recording as soon as the paint was dry. IIRC from Nick Mason's book, even though two tracks were already familiar - the actual recording was somewhat of a techinical clusterfuck. Animals took just under a year to record, is that Floyd's idea of back to basics?

They recorded it all in one place and the only credited players are the band members (apart from, weirdly, a guitar part on one song only available on the 8-track release?), so by Floyd standards, yeah.

Gilmour played the same solo for 50 years and was hailed as a genius. Which is, I suppose, a form of genius.

Oh is this the Pink Floyd opinions channel? Excuse me

Pink Floyd certainly qualifies as an aging rock act, although they really didn't have any basics to get back to.

If only we had a thread for them

I don't think this is the thread for purists.

xxp Just four guys, and a set of Elektro-Mess-Technik plate reverberators, in a tiled echo chamber…

In my defense I actually posted on the Animals thread and got dragged in here entirely against my will. Like a giant pig balloon coming untethered and crashing in an irate farmer's field, you could say.

I dub thee unforgiven

I was responsible for that but the fact that the two threads were live at the same time mad it hard to resist.

Pink Floyd’s weird, their “back to basics” impetus gets channeled way way backwards in time to extreme basics, like pre-music caveperson basic, e.g ummugunda studio disc, “household objects”

Four EMS sequencers in a room

pre-music caveperson basic

Four furry guys gathered together in a cave grooving with a Pict, getting back to basics

They'd need Syd if they truly wanted to get back to the basics.

You could make a case for The Endless River as Floyd's "four guys sitting in David Gilmour's houseboat" album. This extra Division Bell material was known to exist and like many latter-era Floyd rumors, its legendary status grew in proportion to how much you love the '68-'72 era of the band. I'd love to hear another More or Obscured By Clouds, but the end product (even as manipulated as it was) still sounds like "four guys sitting in David Gilmour's houseboat looking for ideas"

Three guys, surely?

Floyd (and/or Gilmour or Mason solo) has been using Guy Pratt since the 80s. He's more or less in the Darryl Jones role.

Fall Out Boy

“I remember when Patrick first played the demo for ‘Love From The Other Side’, and it felt new and old at the same time,” continues Pete. “It was something we would have wanted to do [back then], but we wouldn’t have really known how to do it.” Not only did Pete instantly know that the track needed to be the lead single for their eighth album, but it was the moment he bought into Patrick’s “back to basics” vision. “I knew we could build a statement around that song.”

Royal Blood

When Mike Kerr and Ben Thatcher sat down to talk about making a new album, they knew what they wanted to achieve. It involved a conscious return to their roots, back when they had made music that was influenced by Daft Punk, Justice, and Philippe Zdar of Cassius. It also called for a similar back-to-basics approach to what had made their self-titled debut album so thrilling, visceral and original.

Are any of these 'back to basics' records successful in that regard, or are they all merely desperate attempts to revive a flagging muse?

And a flagging career.

I'm pretty sure Honking on Bobo was a huge success

Have there been any ironic or "meta" takes on the "back to basics" album

Not quite the same thing, but Quadrophenia was originally supposed to be sequenced as a "history of the Who", with the first disc starting off with 1965-style arrangements, and only gradually introducing keyboards, horns and synthesizers as the record went on.

Pink Floyd certainly qualifies as an aging rock act, although they really didn't have any basics to get back to.

I remember a defensive quote from Richard Wright, maybe in the early 90s: "we could make a great record with just a guitar, a Hammond organ and a drum kit..."

Are any of these 'back to basics' records successful in that regard

Despite a dismissive comment above, I thought the general take on Accelerate was that R.E.M. had stopped their downward slope and at least deserved an honorable mention. I thought it was about as good as Around the Sun, though certainly more energetic (and shorter).

Not quite the same thing, but Quadrophenia was originally supposed to be sequenced as a "history of the Who", with the first disc starting off with 1965-style arrangements, and only gradually introducing keyboards, horns and synthesizers as the record went on.

Yes and no. The original project was called Rock Is Dead - Long Live Rock, and it was indeed envisioned as a kind of Who history. Among the tracks completed were "Long Live Rock," "Is It In My Head?", and "Love, Reign O'er Me." Around that time (May, 1972), they also recorded and/or completed a few songs originally meant for Lifehouse: "Put The Money Down," "Join Together," and "Relay" which were to be incorporated into RID-LLR. There were also three songs that only circulate as Townshend demos (and may not have been recorded by the Who): "Get Inside," "Women's Liberation," and "Can't You See I'm Easy" that were to be part of the project.

The album unfinished, they did a European tour in the summer of 1972, then Townshend got involved with an orchestral performance/recording of Tommy, and then set up Eric Clapton's comeback concert, which is when he started thinking about mod again, began writing Quadrophenia, and incorporated two of the 1972 songs into it. Parts of Quadrophenia -- "The Real Me" and "5.15" -- are four-guys-in-a-room, but most of it is three-guys-in-a-room-overdubbing-onto-Pete's-demos and, separately, one-guy-in-a-room-singing-onto-Pete's-demos; Daltrey would only record his vocals if Pete was not present at the studio. And Entwistle would take the multitracks home after a session and overdub multiple horn parts at his home studio.

"I thought the general take on Accelerate was that R.E.M. had stopped their downward slope and at least deserved an honorable mention."

*Accelerate* is so effing loud. The songs are IMHO great but have no room to breathe. It is probably quite typical that a lot of acts’ "back to basics" album has worse sound than their early work that dated from an era of greater dynamic range.

By the time a band puts out their 14th album, their ears are probably so fucked that they have no idea how it sounds

I really love about 2/3 of Accelerate. The vinyl is much less compressed.

xps

"We decided to go honk-to-Bobo for this album"

Reviving a flagging Bobo

Honkin' on Boebert

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/26/media/cnn-after-chris-licht-reliable-sources/index.html

just a bunch of anchors in a room with teleprompters goin wall to wall on the stories you love

0m50s

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

"With this we wanted it to feel like these guys in a room playing together. To that end it's trying to keep this side of it" (points to microphone) "as minimal as possible and get it out of the way so it doesn't fuck with the energy in the forward motion."

Trying too hard

just record in the dark ffs

No electricity is the new thing

Dude there was this whole thing a few years ago - American Epic. Jack White & friends recorded direct to vinyl on an vintage apparatus powered by gravity.

At one point the strap holding the counterweight broke, and Jack made a big deal about going to find an upholstery shop and sewing it himself, because of COURSE he did, as the world's most famous ex-upholsterer. Showboating prick.

I suspect it could have been fixed with a few safety pins and some duct tape but then it wouldn't have been Jack White saving the day.

It did provide this crystalline perfect performance from Ashley Monroe, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtD7LfsTnkY

I heard you and your band have sold your microphones and bought a room

Should have bought four guys

Recorded our last album at a Five Guys:

https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-p/13/16/dd/10/photo0jpg.jpg

One room...a few mics...three screaming kids...and a ton of fries.

I feel like the phrase “it came together organically” is a close cousin to the BTB aesthetic

World needs an album by an aging act put together entirely by AI—so they can say it came together synthetically.

It’s maybe the whole point of AI.

Also this has been done already hundreds of times, right? Just um,without AI.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHUlfOD5lPM

12'34" incase the stamp doesn't work

in case you don't want to watch: "we want to bring back guitar music, and the band in a room sound."

well spotted i say

Zach Myers on Shinedown's new album, Planet Zero: “It's the sound of a band in a room playing rock 'n' roll – I think a lot of our fans missed that”

https://www.guitarworld.com/features/shinedown-zach-myers-planet-zero

It's not just you. I listened to some of Bigger Bang yesterday, noticing a real spark in the playing there that you get when it's a bunch of guys who've played together forever actually playing together and responding to each other in real time (or at least a better simulation thereof).

― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Monday, 23 October 2023 04:44 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

The band went actual years without ever once playing in the same room.

On Nov. 17, Bissell’s new project Car Colors will release "Old Death," his first new song in more than 20 years

Some work ethic this guy.