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

I would listen to an unfocused black crows album bereft of riffs

“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

Geoff Barrow on the new Beak> album, >>>>:

After playing hundreds of gigs and festivals over the years we felt that touring had started to influence our writing to the point we weren’t sure who we were anymore. So we decided to go back to the origins of where we were at on our first album—with zero expectations and just playing together in a room.

Beak to Basics

From the Pitchfork review of the new Godspeed album:

More than any Godspeed record to date, “NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD” feels less like a deliberate, intricately structured composition than the natural, intuitive result of friends seated in a room together, hanging on to each other, and finding salvation in the adrenalizing rush of a great riff