LP5 Update #1

Let's try making sense of this.

Wow. Y’all are wonderful and left some great questions in the replies. Rather than rapid fire answer them all, I’ll try to group them into updates that make sense and answer them over the next month. If you have any new questions or you’re just checking this out, leave a comment and I’ll add it to the list of things to get to. But for now, let’s make some sense of what we’re doing in the studio.

Fantasy basketball & recording

The Process

We don’t do anything particularly revolutionary when recording, and we tend to approach each record with an open mind as far as how we want to work. Brave Faces required us to track all the drums in 3 days and then build atop that at a separate studio. On No Joy we piled everything into one room at Collin Pastore’s house and recorded one song at a time from really minimal demos.

For this record, we’re back in a full studio and finding a flow that fits. So far Walla has had us approach recording like a collage — we’ll start with the demos (which are better produced this time) and lay down some real drums while we sort the arrangement. Then we’ve jumped to vocals and got them down, and then proceeded to add whatever felt good at that moment — we’ve jumped from rhythm guitar to bass to synth back to drums for another song back to synths, etc. It’s been a great way to avoid getting bogged down into the details of any one part and letting the inevitable doubt set in.

I hinted at this in the previous post, but the act of recording is an act of (necessary) destruction for me. When I write a song, it’s this perfect thing that exists in my head and can go a seemingly infinite number of ways. Once we start making decisions on what the song will actually be, all of those infinite possibilities are destroyed and I’m left hoping that the final translation from my brain to finished track is both good and reflective of the people who had a hand in the process.

So yeah, the less we can have me doubting the destruction, the better.

A side note to answer the question of why we’re working with two producers: it’s largely an availability thing. We wanted to make a record with both Walla and Sarah, but the dates didn’t line up perfectly for either. Usually you have to choose one or the other, but the label pitched the idea of splitting it, and it felt like the ultimate way to have our cake and eat it too. It’s still going to be a single record, and we’re trying to collaborate with both across the entirety of it so that it sounds like a singular vision. I’m just happy everyone’s on board.

Themes & SLS

A few of you asked about themes and writing during the current political time. I’ll do an entire update deep-dive about this, but until then I’ll spill a little bit about how I like to work.

Typically, I need a unifying theme or challenge to help me make sense of the stream of lyrics I accumulate over a 1-2 year period. As an example, here’s my starting points for each of our previous records:

Giant - Wow getting divorced sucks.

Schmaltz - What if I wrote a fest-y pop-punk record that wasn’t about relationships at all, but more about my own anxieties and fears that I’m an asshole?

BFE - What if I tried writing about other people and how hard life seems to be for almost every person I know. Also I had scribbled down the line Brave Faces, Everyone

No Joy - What if I wrote an entire album of love songs after all the death and pain of the pandemic?

You’ll notice I tend to be a bit reactionary. Musically we’re the same way. It’s a lot of rebelling against the record that comes before.

LP5 - I’m sick of the future.

Studio Entertainment

Each update I’ll include what I’m listening to and reading while we’re working. Notable inclusions this week are selections from:

Tunes:

Midnight Oil - Red Sails in the Sunset

Bryan Adams - Cuts Like a Knife

INXS - The Swing

The Cars - Heartbeat City

The Format - Boycott Heaven

Yellow Magic Orchestra - Solid State Survivor

Books:

Laila Lalami - The Dream Hotel

Haruki Murakami - The City and its Uncertain Walls

And to answer one of the questions, I really haven’t read a ton of philosophy since college. I much prefer fiction to just about any other kind of reading.

Quotes of the Week

“Don’t trust a guy in a punk band who dresses and acts like Elvis.” - CW

“I can’t say out loud what my favorite record of all-time is, but my sister showed it to me when I was 12.” - Meredith after Chris asked us the question. Her favorite album is Transatlanticism.

Okay wow, let’s end this here. Back next week with more. Our resident merch slinger Courtney is in the studio this week grabbing content, so hopefully you’ll get some better photos and maybe I’ll drop a demo that isn’t going to make the record.

As a treat for making it this far, and in the spirit of making this space a bit more open than my usual socials, I’ll end with a clip of me tracking vocals, aka one of the most nerve-wracking places I ever find myself.

-D