On The Record: Jukebox The Ghost and Producer Peter Katis On "Everything Under The Sun"
BRIDGEPORT, CT: In July, we saw Jukebox The Ghost perform songs from their new record, Everything Under The Sun, at 92YTribeca. Building on the more straight-ahead piano-pop of their previous album, Let Live and Let Ghosts, the new tunes came across live in epic fashion, more Queen than Ben Folds, and we couldn’t wait to hear the new album.
Jukebox The Ghost playing to an invitation-only room at 92Y Tribeca in July.
Out this week on Yep Roc, Everything Under The Sun delivers the energetic, mega-prog-pop performances we witnessed live with a sonic depth that keeps you coming back for more.
Looking to add dimension, darker tones and dynamics to their sound for this, their sophomore release, Jukebox The Ghost tapped Peter Katis (The National, Interpol, Frightened Rabbit, Mates of State, Jonsi) to produce and engineer, spending the better part of two months up at his Tarquin Studios in Bridgeport, CT.
“Peter’s production tends to be a lot darker than our first record,” says Jukebox The Ghost singer/pianist Ben Thornewill. “He seems to give bands a bit more edge than they might otherwise have sonically, and in terms of arrangements. And especially since we end up making really happy, upbeat music, we didn’t want a yes man in the studio — we wanted his more angular approach to recording.”
Make no mistake, however, Everything Under The Sun is heavy on the hand-claps and harmonies, big pop piano jams and bright rock guitars, so Katis’ dark production comes in subtle contrasts — shades of distortion, drum and keyboard flavors and space within highly dynamic arrangements.
It’s drums that Thornewill mentions first of Katis’ handiwork. “A lot of his approach, or sound, seems to be about the way he records drums so that they’re very big and punchy and in-your-face. He also effected the hell out of a lot of them.”
Katis had flagged the band’s drum sound coming into the project. “As opposed to the modern sound of the drum kit used on their previous album, I thought they really needed something more bombastic and old-school,” he explains. “And that’s totally what we went for — that ‘coated heads’ kind of sound.
Jukebox The Ghost is (l-r) drummer Jesse Kristin, singer-pianist Ben Thornewill and singer-guitarist Tommy Siegel.
“But I also wanted it to sound like a modern record. I wanted it to have a grittier, messier, rougher, old fashioned sound, but still be a good, loud, punchy record,” he continues. “And, there were some songs that just spoke for themselves, and others where there was more of an opportunity for me to do my thing as a producer, like on the track ‘So Let Us Create.’”
One of the quieter songs on the record, the slow-build-to-epic “So Let Us Create,” was one of the undecideds for the band going into the studio.
“Part of our challenge as a trio is to make arrangements with just piano, drums and guitar sound very full and developed,” explains Thornewill. “So when one of us brings a song to the band, we’ll write a live version of it. But we didn’t do that with ‘So Let Us Create’ — it was just a piano and voice demo and we really didn’t know what it was going to sound like.”
Katis encouraged the band to work on this song in the studio, keeping the sparse piano and vocal beginning and building up verse after verse. “There are only three chords to the song, it barely changes,” says Thornewill. “But as it goes on, background vocals, glockenspiel, celeste, layers of strings come in and out. It’s not until two minutes into the song that all the instruments are playing — acoustic and electric guitar, drums, bass and all those added elements — and it’s all stacked in and out to give it this really full sound.”
“A lot of what Peter does as a producer is to listen and if a part sounds like it’s lacking, then we’ll add something and either it will work or it won’t,” he continues, “And often we’d keep adding, and building the parts until there’s that one point where all of a sudden you realize you’re doing way too much and it’s time to cut yourselves off. It’s time to stop and come back to it later.”
BLOWING OUT THE SOUND WITHOUT BURNING OUT
Jukebox The Ghost bunked up at Tarquin during the work-weeks — Monday-Thursday — and then headed back to Philly or into NYC for the weekends, playing shows and getting some air.
Jukebox The Ghost in Brooklyn during Make Music New York.
“There was a lot of experimentation in the studio,” says Thornewill. “Obviously there’s only so much you can do with piano, but we recorded a lot of organ and celeste, and tons of synth layers, more than we would end up keeping in the songs. And so it was really great to have the weekend to clear our ears and be able to think about what we’d been doing in the studio, and come back with a fresh mind.
“I think it just gave us more time to make smarter decisions in the studio without getting too bogged down in the work.”
As is typical for Katis, this was far from an assembly-line production. “We were trying to crank out a large number of songs in a short period of time but it wasn’t all about performance — those guys are all great players and they are pretty fast — we were also trying to be creative and push it as far as it could go.”
Maximizing their studio time, the band was recording new parts until the very last day of the final mix. “It was funny because towards the end of what we thought of as ‘the recording process,’ we were all slowly freaking out because we were still recording every day and building things, and in our experience you need just as many days to mix as to record,” Thornewill relays.
“We’d done 20 odd days of straight recording, and we were wondering, why aren’t we mixing it yet? And then it became apparent that Peter really mixes as he goes and so during the actual ‘final mixing process,’ there wasn’t a whole lot more we had to do.”
Katis often performs this kind of recording-mixing hybrid, which allows some of his band-clients like The National to do basic tracking in their own studio then go up to Tarquin to “mix,” a process during which songs may change dramatically with Katis’ influence and many more parts being added and subtracted.
Yep Roc released "Everything Under The Sun" 9/7/10
Jukebox the Ghost took advantage of every second. “We were struggling really hard on the chorus of the song ‘The Popular Thing,’ it was sounding kind of weak,” Thornewill shares. “And this has never happened before, but I had a dream where I thought that the chorus should be a bunch of people singing. And we tried it out and it worked and that happened maybe the second-to-last day.”
Working at Tarquin, the band had access to an amazing collection of instruments, amps and gear, though the big production-tip takeaway for Thornewill was about the little things that can make all the difference. “A lot of what I learned from making this record is about how the small, textural things can completely change the shape and [sonic] quality of a song,” he notes.
“The song, ‘Empire,’ is a good example of this. On the very first day of recording, Peter likes to tackle one song and just plow through it. And once we got the basics down — guitar, piano and drums — we added this bell part, which is very simple, quarter notes, which we made slightly syncopated and this completely changed the dynamic of the song for the better.”
Stream “Empire” here: HERE
…And check out the rest of Everything Under The Sun via Yep Rock and iTunes. Keep up with Jukebox The Ghost via http://jukeboxtheghost.com/ and see the band play The Music Hall of Williamsburg September 16, 2010. For more on Peter Katis and Tarquin Studios, visit http://www.tarquinrecords.com/studio. Get in touch with Katis via http://www.worldsend.com.
Images: Jukebox The Ghost is (l-r) drummer Jesse Kristin, singer-pianist Ben Thornewill and singer-guitarist Tommy Siegel.