“The last record was definitely six
people firing on all cylinders all the
time—just creating a racket,” says
singer and keyboardist Stephen Patterson.
“With this record, we were
much more selective about where to
drop in what instruments. We took a
much sparser approach.”
Produced by Britt Daniel of indierock
darlings Spoon and tracked by
Nicolas Vernhes (Fischerspooner, Animal
Collective), It’s Frightening has a
more dynamic sound than its predecessor—
due in part to the vintage
boards and outboard gear used
throughout its creation.
Demos were recorded through a
TASCAM Model 5A mixing board
belonging to rehearsal space cohabitants
the Walkmen, and the album
was tracked through a 1979 MCI JH-536
console onto a 1971 3M M79 recorder
at Rare Book Room in Brooklyn. For
Daniel, preserving the unhinged spirit
of those original demos was
paramount to the process, and he
even incorporated a portion of the
early material into the final versions.
For example, Patterson’s meandering
piano line and haunting, choral-esque
hums on “Leave It at the Door” are
products of the band’s rehearsalspace
sketches.
Daniel also noticed that most of
the demo drum tracks had a crispy,
overdriven quality—the result of miking
the kits with a single Shure SM58.
To retain that thin, barebones sound,
the TASCAM Model 5A was brought
down to the Rare Book Room and
used as a mic preamp before going
into the MCI console. Daniel also
encouraged the band to embrace
“incidental moments” and imperfections
on the demos—such as the intimate
room noise captured by an
overhead Neumann U 67 on “Midnight
and I” (if you listen closely, you can
even hear Patterson light up a smoke
at the 55-second mark), and the ragtime
sound of the keys on “Rudie
Fails” (attributed to the fact that no
one bothered to clean out all the junk
that fell into the back of the piano
over the years).
Echoing the band’s desire to
“treat mixing as a performance
rather than a perfected process,”
Mike McCarthy (Trail Of Dead, Lee
Ann Womack) performed his mixes
without automation, moving faders
on the fly, and then editing the best
mix moments together before the
mastering session. He also relied
heavily on panning to create extra
space. For example, the multiple percussion
tracks on “Lionesse” are
panned hard right and hard left to
make room for the traipsing piano
lick that sits in the middle.
But while lo-fi sonics, vintage gear,
and self-imposed technical limitations
played significant roles in the production
of It’s Frightening, the album’s
biggest creative decision may have
been opting to use analog tape.
“It was our first time recording
analog, and that proved to be very
beneficial for us,” Patterson says.
“There are so many guys in the
band, and it’s really tempting to keep
putting on layers upon layers. But
being limited to a certain number of
tracks helped us stay focused on
which pieces really mattered.”