SEA CHANGE Nicole Atkins
Feb 08, 2011
It's been a period of prolonged upheaval for the gorgeous rock chanteuse. With a new album, band and tour, things are looking up.
BY NICK D'AMORE
The album's title seems so charming and innocent. Mondo Amore, Nicole Atkins' huge expression of love in the form of her second album, coming out a week before Valentine's Day, no less.
Or not. Not after the year (or two) she's had.
In the years following her 2007 debut full-length, Neptune City, Atkins' career had been ascending steadily. She had a critically claimed album and was receiving wider recognition. She shared stages and recorded with David Byrne and A.C. Newman.
Then, in 2009, came upheaval. She and her record label, Columbia Records, parted company, for reasons that have befallen many an artist on a major label in the past decade. The people who had originally signed Atkins were gone and now there were haggles and discussions about singles and even the tempos of her songs. So, in the beginning stages of crafting a new album, the search was on for a new home. According to Atkins, the split from the label that had released her first records, 2006's Bleeding Diamonds EP and the following year's Neptune City, was a positive step for her. She soon found a willing partner in Razor & Tie, a company initially known for releasing compilations such as Monster Ballads, but that in recent years has amassed an impressive roster of artists, including Joan Baez, Dar Williams, Richard Ashcroft and Zappa Plays Zappa.
"Once I left, I felt a lot freer to make the music I wanted to without having to worry about hits," Atkins says. "Razor & Tie are super-into what I make and give me the freedom to do my thing. It's fun again."
The record label change was not the only huge musical hurdle Atkins would have to best. Around the same time, she also split with her longtime backing band, The Sea, a group of talented players who excelled at the tight arrangements of Atkins' songs. Similar to her change of label, the change of supporting cast seemed to come at the right time. She was writing darker, moodier and looser material that would require players with a more spontaneous and harder feel than The Sea had brought. She aptly dubbed her new band, The Black Sea, reflecting the sounds with which she was now experimenting. The band as it currently exists is your basic rock setup, guitar (Irina Yalkowski), drums (Ezra Oaklan), bass (Jeremy Kay); Yalkowski and Kay are both on Mondo Amore, while Chris Donofrio held down the drum seat for the album.
Probably the most difficult challenge for Atkins in the run-up to her new album was a bit more personal than leaving behind her old bandmates and record label. She also ended a years-long relationship with her boyfriend, the heartbreak of which can be heard throughout the album in songs like "Hotel Plaster," "Cry Cry Cry" (not a Johnny Cash cover; both that and "Hotel Plaster" were co-writes with Austin musician - and longtime BLURT fave - Robert Harrison of Future Clouds and Radar) and "You Were the Devil."
The moral of the story might be that with big love sometimes comes big loss. The result of all the chaos is a menacing and melancholy mosaic of her journey set to a soundtrack of intriguing new sounds from Atkins. But, starkly present above it all is her powerful voice that retains its flair for the dramatic, with perhaps a touch more grit and edge behind things now.
Ironically, it was during one of the more difficult times in her life that Atkins found the confidence to create an album that sounds more like what she hears in her head. "I trust myself more to write what I would want to listen to: blowout music mixed with crooner ballads," she says. "I made a conscious effort to write more dramatic and heavy songs."
That confidence spread to the studio, where she took more of a lead role in the production of the album, particularly with the string parts. "I wrote the string arrangements to be more of a lead melody than as padding as they were on Neptune City," she says. "Making this record was a lot more mellow and off-the-cuff than making Neptune was."
With an anything-goes vibe during recording, Atkins and producer Phil Palazzolo tossed around ideas and called any and all musicians they both dug to guest on the album. They brought in Salt & Samovar and fellow Jersey Shore natives Atlantic, Atlantic, as well as Jim James of My Morning Jacket. James lent his distinctive pipes to the song "War is Hell" by recording his part in a hotel room and emailing it to her. The looseness surrounding the recording carried over to the mixing phase, which was done during Fourth of July weekend at the Carriage House in Connecticut. During a huge party on the lawn of the place, Atkins became suddenly inspired. "I got drunk and redid the vocals to half the songs in one night. Shit sounded sweet with a little bourbon on the throat."
During the recording of the album, Atkins toured with her old friends the Avett Brothers, which included a stop at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, and also made a quick jaunt to the United Kingdom to open a concert for Regina Spektor at O2 Academy Leeds. Both the tour and the one-off Spektor show were exciting for Atkins, who had come up with both artists from some inauspicious beginnings.
"We [Atkins and Spektor] used to play together in the back of a buffalo wing restaurant I used to work at," she remembers. "Me, her, the Avett Brothers and Langhorne Slim playing for maybe seven people. It was a trip to open for her in front of a few thousand."
The Mondo Amore promo tour will begin in earnest this month, with a record release show at Bowery Ballroom in New York on Feb. 9 that will feature a string section and a guest appearance from her keyboardist from The Sea, Dan Chen. The subsequent North American tour, featuring openers Cotton Jones (recently profiled at BLURT), will stretch into early March. Along the way there will be an appearance on Conan O'Brien's TBS show on Feb. 17, then next month, a slot at SXSW in Austin.
This tour will be more directly supported by Atkins' fans than just buying tickets, thanks to her Kickstarter campaign. She began the campaign barely a month ago to help offset the rising costs of touring, including getting a touring van, gas, lodging and having a stage setup. In the short time the campaign has been established, Atkins' fans have donated more than $17,000 to her cause, with donations starting at $1. In addition to helping her be able to actually tour, donors of specific amounts will receive certain perks for their generosity. Give $15 and get the album and a monthly newsletter. Give $60 and get seasonal mix tapes from Atkins for a year. Give $500 and she'll write you a tune.
But, really, Atkins is just looking forward to going back on the road with her new band, new tunes and fresh start to 2011. The musicians will be bringing their darker, harder sound to Atkins' old songs as well. ("They all sound more surfy and romantic and dark. All of the old songs are sounding new again.") And she predicts that the new material and new band might leave lasting memories ringing in their ears of her audiences for a while.
As she proclaims, "Shit is loud!"
[Photo Credit: Lucia Holm]
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