Chatting with Andy Chase: Behind Brookville's 'Broken Lights'

September 28th, 2009 by Trenton

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CHELSEA, MANHATTAN: Andy Chase has a one-track mind. That is, tracking one song all at once live in the studio was his M.O. for recording the third album with one of his many New York City-based projects, Brookville. The collection being released on 9/29 is Broken Lights, is obsessive in its pursuit of songwriting perfection, and carried Chase along on a complex journey throughout its creation.

Andy Chase is Brookville, Photo Credit: Philippe Garcia

Equal parts recording artist (Ivy, Paco) and producer (Tahiti 80, Juliana Hatfield), Chase guided the creation of the album at the home facility he co-owns with James Iha and Adam Schlesinger, NYC’s Stratosphere Sound. Things started out simply enough: Following an inspiring experience recording the Trashcan Sinatras playing all together in the same room at the same time, Chase set out to do the same with his band for Broken Lights.

“I’ve been lucky to work with great bands, and have the ability to somehow get something from them in my production,” he says. “I’ve been able to hone in on what it was that resonated for me, and infuse that into my own music. That’s really a wonderful thing if you feel that happening.”

Chase turned his back on the prevailing practice of mostly overdubbing, getting a little risky to make compellingly sophisticated rock/pop gems such as “Great Mistake”, “Tell Her You Love Her”, and “Dreaming On”. “Traditionally keyboard, drums, guitar, may play at the same time, but everyone knows you’re just getting the drums,” Chase explains. “Then everyone goes back in the control room and overdubs. But for the new Trashcan Sinatras record trashcansinatras.com (In the Music), they insisted that we do it Rolling Stones-style, six people live. That experience made me want to do the new Brookville record that way.

“We learned the songs first, and we spread out in the live room of Stratosphere’s Studio A, cut the tracks live, and made a rule: no editing. If we liked the bass take, but not the drum take, everyone would have to do it again. That’s difficult to do when Pro Tools is there, and you know you can do anything you want. It’s kind of liberating when you know you only have a few choices. So we recorded it live: bass, drums, keyboard acoustic guitar, and in some cases even vocals.”

Yin to the yang: the few overdubs needed next took fucking forever. “After recording, the album sounds were 75% finished – and then it took us an exorbitant amount of time experimenting with bells and whistles to figure out which ones to use,” admits Chase. “It was ironic. We had been so disciplined and old skool with recording the basic tracks. Then we got to the overdub point and took two weeks to bring in marimbas, melodicas…trying everything we could think of, then keeping just a couple of things.”

Chase points to the song “Happy” to show why the push and pull were worth it. “It just felt and sounded like the record that I wanted to make. It has a dryness about it that I wanted for this record: almost no reverb, just a few very discreet delays, but it still sounds very ambient. That’s the contrast I love. If you analyze Broken Lights it’s quite dry, but it still sounds extremely 3D and ambient.”

Andy Chase is a model citizen of the New York City sound sector – making advanced music happen for himself, other bands and fans in equal measure.

“I think that when I first moved to New York City and started Ivy, there really wasn’t a scene here musically,” he says. “Today, more than ever, NYC is a force to be reckoned with, maybe the most vibrant scene since the late 1970’s. It started with The Strokes, and no matter what you think of them, they started a new sound, and a lot of bands have followed in their wake. Now there’s a personality here, and today NYC is a fantastic place to be a musician.” – David Weiss