Even the vocals give space to the song.
AD: That’s what we were going for.
DC: Obviously, the songs had to work as instrumental tracks as well, because we’re going to be playing them that way most of the time.
How much do the songs change through the recording process?
DC: This time around there was a lot of trying to make it very concise, as opposed to sprawling. There was a lot of reducing this time. It was additive in terms of, like, “Oh, we need a bigger guitar sound here, we need this here,” but in general it was reducing.
AD: Cutting off the fat. We really made sure it was a lean piece of meat.
DC: And yet still, the average length of the songs is like eight minutes long… [laughs]
A lot of Earth’s music seems like it’s very textured-oriented. I’m curious how much time you guys spend working out specific sounds and textures.
DC: Usually, I’ll go in for basic tracks and try a few different amps. If I’m not playing with my own amp and I’m playing something in the studio, usually I’ll try a few, but then the moment I find the one I like, that’s the only one I’ll use for the rest of the session for basic tracks. And then for overdubs, me and Randall have this real ability to just be like, “Oh, we need this” and say “OK, that amp with this pedal.” I don’t know if it’s just that I’ve been doing it for a long time but –
AD: You guys just vibe off each other.
DC: Yeah, it’s just like, “Oh, we need a big guitar here” and then it’s like, “OK, that Marshall and this fuzz,” and so on.
Recording is saving one moment, whereas live is like, there’s a band and an audience and we’ve all come to this spot and we’re doing something that will not happen again. It’s different every night, different every time, and it’s not going to happen the same way ever again.
AD: It’s similar with the percussion. Because, you know, drum tracks, most of them you don’t do a lot of drum overdubs, but you’ve got the basic tracks, you can beef them up, but percussion ideas, things for counter-rhythms, textural sounds, bells, that kinda stuff, is gonna be done later and then put in. So same thing with Randall, that’s also how I work with him. We hear something, and we don’t have to do a lot of tries. Usually we don’t try every single idea we have. We try to make sure it really is necessary and make good use of the space allotted and make sure everything serves the song, and you’re not just doing it ‘cause you can. Even though it’s tempting to!
DC: On the basic tracks I used a Marshall JMP that was Dave’s, and then the overdubs I used my amp, but then I tried a bunch of pedals, either that were at the studio or were from my collection. I just used one of those Egnater Tweaker heads, the little 15-watt ones. And then I had this fuzz pedal called the Submarine, and then the Dark Matter overdrive, the Uni-Vibes, plus the Prescription Electronics pedal, and then sometimes I’ll get the tone and Randall will be like, “Let’s get the delay on it” and we’ll break out the Echoplex.
AD: What’s hilarious is I get to be in the room while Randall and Dylan fight over his compressor. Dylan tries to sneak it in, Randall’s aware it’s there, he’s like quashing it out, Dylan’s trying to sneak it in again. It’s a war over compression.
DC: That’s the one pedal, if I could only have the one. What happens is if I’m compressing a lot and then he wants to add compression while mixing –
AD: He doesn’t have any room.
DC: So yeah, I usually have to use less compression than I use live.
AD: I’m in a place there that’s much more open there in the studio. It’s a lot of things that you tweak and alter for a studio sound, versus what you do live. I’m trying to use different snare sounds, to have each song have its own drum character and feelings and emotions. I’m really, really sensitive to tones of cymbals, and how they mesh in the key of the song that we’re playing. I’m almost OCD about it, really hyper-aware. Either it works or it doesn’t. That’s how I see it. So I pay a lot of attention to that.
I’m really curious about the drumming, because I often find drummers have such a hard time playing slow and the slower it gets, the harder it is. How much are you able to play that way using more technical tools like counting, versus how much is it more by feel?
AD: It used to be much more by feel and feel alone, and the technical counting and all that was used tangentially. And now, it’s like the feel is integrated and the feeling of keeping the movement going. For me a lot of rock drums is all these super-sharp, bright, right angles and everything is very square. And the way I play generally, even when doing rock, is more circular, cyclical. My movements are very broad and elaborate and always moving. There’s not a lot of sharpness. So I found that even when playing with more of a metal direction, I’m able to integrate those metal techniques into how I was previously playing to give it more of a burliness. But I’ve just kind of developed my own style. It’s not accent drumming. You’re playing extremely slow, well under 40 or 50 beats per minute, but you’ve still always got the backbeat, you’ve always got the pick-up note, you’re keeping it as a groove instead of just accenting. That’s what I try to do. That’s the goal, having it feel like a heartbeat, the way drums are supposed to. The heartbeat of the song.
Earth’s music tends to be really evocative. A really sort of visual, atmospheric music. I’m curious how much, when you go to write a song, you have a specific story in mind or a specific atmosphere or feeling.
DC: I usually don’t have a specific story so much, but I always think of the song as an arc. I feel like it’s coming from somewhere and ending somewhere, even with all the repetition. To me, the song needs to be an arc and the album needs to have an arc.
AD: That’s what’s missing in some of the modern stuff.
DC: Yeah, I mean, some music is repetitive for the sake of being repetitive or slow for the sake of being slow, rather than asking, “Is that what this song needs?” And, I mean, I don’t dislike CDs, but to me what happened when the CD came out was like, bands had all this time to fill. To me, the great records, it’s not just like, “Oh, they had these really good songs on it.” It’s also about the song order, and the arc of the record. And that was kind of lost with CDs, because it became, “Oh, we have 85 minutes,” and I think either bands or labels were saying, “You gotta fill it up,” and so then it was like, just fill the fucker. And then it became, “Oh, we’ll put the hits up front and the filler in the back.” Or not even worry about the order, because it’s a CD and they’ll just skip through it anyway. I don’t think you need to fill the whole CD, I think how long the album is is how long the album is, and if it needs to be 40 minutes, then 40 minutes. That’s how long it used to be because with vinyl you’d only get 20 minutes a side. But yeah, the songs to me always try to have some kind of arc, and then once they’re recorded and it’s time to arrange the record, I’ll go through different orders, and really be like, “I think it needs to go this way or that way.”
AD: Sometimes we’ll have elaborate debates and have to do a presentation on why this song order works better, and why that just doesn’t work like that. We have different opinions, and we kind of brainstorm until we find the perfect thing.
DC: Maybe it’s because I’ve been doing it long enough, but the songwriting isn’t a super-conscious process. It’s more like, “Oh, I want to do this with this song and this riff feels this way to me” without being super-specific. There’s obvious musical influences, but I’m also influenced by books I read and films I like and you know, locations I like and people I meet.
Were there specific books or movies or other locations that influenced Primitive and Deadly?
DC: It’s funny, this record was definitely a lot less like that. Maybe because I’d been touring so much that year, and there wasn’t as much reading as previous records, and a lot less film-watching.
AD: Yeah, not like with Hex and Blood Meridian.
DC: Yeah. It was more like being on the road and touring and playing shows every night.
AD: It is kind of influenced by that. Being in a different city every night.
DC: It’s kind of like the Scorpions’ records starting at Blackout and Love at First Sting, where every song is like, “We came to town, we rocked you, we love you, we’d really like to stay, but we gotta go!” [laughs]
AD: “We gotta go!”
DC: So maybe that’s what the next Earth record will be.
All touring jams.
AD: Love ‘em and leave ‘em.
DC: The love ‘em and leave ‘em tour band. But yeah, I mean, I love the Scorpions, so I’m not saying anything bad about them. To me, this album has a lot more momentum to it, even though the songs aren’t necessarily faster than previous Earth records.
It definitely feels more driven.
DC: Yeah.
AD: There’s kind of a little bit of a “Hell yeah!” throughout the whole thing. [Laughs]
DC: With Bees we were looking for the driver, and now we’ve found the driver and we’re driving.
Whose sweet car is that in the press photos?
DC: The artist Samantha Muljat, who did the album art.
AD: She came out and we bunked together in a little backwoods cabin.
DC: Yeah, we played at Pappy and Harriet’s out by Joshua Tree and she came out.
AD: We did this awesome little desert photo shoot the next day and she was like, “I got this sweet car,” and we were like, “Let’s use it!”
It’s funny, too, because there hadn’t been vocals on an Earth record since Pentastar, and there had never been vocals on an Earth record since the reboot… But it’s not like I was ever like, “I don’t like vocals blah blah blah.” Earth’s first release had vocals, so it’s not like I was opposed to vocals.
Did you request a specific type of cover art from her?
DC: I wanted to do a photographic cover this time because the Angels covers were so much about the visual art of Stacey Rozich. It was much more like, artwork. I really wanted to do a photographic cover this time, because it’s something we hadn’t done in a while, since Hex. Samantha is the art director at Southern Lord. I’m very happy with how it came out, and I had a very specific idea for the cover.
AD: You guys did a lot of collaborating on it.
DC: I shouldn’t say that, because she did it all, so I don’t want to say we collaborated…
AD: She came through, is the important part.
DC: Yeah. She did a really good job.
Do the five moons have a specific significance?
DC: She presented me with three choices and that was the one I liked the best. I really am into the moon, and the number five is my favorite number, so maybe that had something to do with it.
You guys were talking earlier about being a metal band, and you’ve worked with some musicians like Karl Blau and Brett Netson who are more associated with the kind of indie-pop scene. I’m curious how those collaborations came about and what that crossover brings.
DC: Well, I’ve known Brett almost as long as Mark, because the second Earth show was with Brett’s band Caustic Resin.
AD: I was a huge Caustic Resin fan. I didn’t know him personally then but I was a big fan.
DC: And then we both lived in L.A. for a while at the same time. And Caustic Resin was definitely more of a ‘rock band’ than Built To Spill. We had done a show in Boise, Idaho, and Brett sat in with us. And he’s a great lead player.
AD: He’s very distinctive. You can tell it’s Brett Netson without having to see him.
DC: So that’s how that happened. And his thing is definitively a more raw rock kind of thing. It’s still pretty jammy and soloing when he’s with Built To Spill, but I also think of him with Caustic Resin, which was more of a heavier thing. And it worked out well live. So that’s how he got on board. Karl Blau happened through the What the Heck Fest in Anacortes. We played with Geneviève [Castrée] and Ô PAON. Her band had played with us a few times and we took her and Mt. Eerie out and then we played with Mt. Eerie a couple times. Our manager Clyde [Peterson] does a project, Your Heart Breaks, and I saw Karl playing drums with them. He’s one of those guys who’s just so talented.
AD: He’s sickeningly talented. He can play drums, he can play bass, he can play guitar, and all so well.
DC: We also found out we both had a shared love of hair metal.
AD: Yeah, we were in Italy in this big-ass church and all of a sudden Karl busts into the intro of “Wanted Dead or Alive” on organ.
So the next Earth album could just be…
DC: Hair metal. Power ballads. [laughs]
So what inspired you to try writing lyrics for “Rooks Across the Gate” in the first place? Do you think the lyric-writing will continue in the future?
DC: I wrote lyrics for that song because it was based on this folkloric research I had done. Like I said, I wanted it to be like a folk song, so it was about murdering your lover, as such folk songs are.
A whole lot of those.
DC: Yeah. I mean, I’ve written lyrics before. I just don’t write them very often.
AD: “Writing lyrics is hard!”
DC: [Laughs] It is.
AD: I was just happy I got a song title in this one.
Which one?
AD: “From the Zodiacal Light.” But my original title was “From the False Dusk to the Zodiacal Light.” I think the last time I got a title in was on Hibernaculum.
DC: But yeah, right now I’m focused on this album and touring and some solo stuff that needs to get done. We’ll have a few months off after this tour, but then we’ll be starting up again early next year doing a full European tour. I’ve started writing a couple new songs already, but whether they survive to make the next record, we’ll see.
AD: What they’ll warp into, we don’t know.
More about: Earth
