The cover of 'Comet in Moominland' by Tove Jansson.
Note small defenseless creatures in existential peril
If there's one thing Matt and I love almost as much as making albums, it's talking about making albums. We whiled away many many tedious flights and drives over the last year expounding on the theory of the album, on all its facets and nuances, without really having any idea what it was going to sound like or what would be on it.
One thing there was a lot of talk about was The Drum Sound, which we knew all about from way in advance. It's The Small Dead Sound, thuddy and brown, like on The Band or Trident-era Bowie.
The first handful of songs he demoed did indeed have this feel. They were very densely constructed and featured quite a lot of brass and jerky rhythm patterns. The verses were tight and paranoid and then suddenly twisted and burst into soaring choruses. They sounded very shiny and hard, but perhaps a little too much surface; it was difficult to get a grip on them. The main thing you noticed was the songs were faster, and a lot less 6/8, and had a new sense of urgency about them. I thought this was an exciting development for Aqualung, and probably had its roots in the surprising career renaissance in America combined with the incredible impact on Matt of becoming a father. I was also happy because fast songs really need more guitar in them.
Eventually, Matt abandoned the concept. Perhaps he'd started staring at a different book cover, also he had fallen in love with Wilco (another exponent of The Small Dead Sound), and the new ideas were generally warmer and less manic. He doled out some songs for me and Kim to write words for, and a few songs later the flavour of the project seemed very different. It was about this time (December 2005) that serious recording schedules began to be discussed, selected demos were played to the record company (to see if they'd laugh/vomit) and that was when I was offered my new job.
This was also the point at which Dan Swift joined us. We'd first encountered Dan while we were making Still Life. He'd been brought in by Jacknife Lee to engineer the tracks he was co-producing. He immediately impressed us with his enthusiasm for distorting things, which is something studiously avoided by most engineers, who may have to pay for the equipment they destroy. It turned out he lived down the road from Matt, and once Still Life was finished Matt asked him to come and work on the (still unreleased) Melanie Blatt album he was producing.
Dan started off as a drummer, but gravitated towards studio work in the early nineties and has been engineering and producing ever since. Aside from his ability to make stuff Sound Brilliant, he's spent so long in studios that he actually knows what the thing you're recording should sound like, and he also knows what the best tools are for every job. Matt and I have quite a lot of experience of making recordings, but we have tended to specialise in recording the instruments we own, whereas Dan will often say things like, 'well, of course we should really be using a tin bath instead of an enamel bath to really get the classic bath sound'. And then when you try the tin bath it does sound better. So that's his job, to make everything Sound Brilliant and also to Know Things.
I'm still not sure what my part of the job is. Perhaps it's as Professional Second Opinion. Perhaps it's a bulk deal on guitar playing. I suppose the best thing I can do is be aware of what needs to be done to make the project work and do that. In this respect I think of myself as a tool, and I hope that Matt and Dan would also say I truly am a massive tool.
