CLEANSING PROCESS Wye Oak (Pt. 1)
Mar 21, 2011
In which the Baltimore indiepopsters learned to quit worrying and love the bomb... er, "to let go."
BY JOHN SCHACHT
According to Wye Oak songwriter Jenn Wasner, "learning to let go" was one of the key emotional territories explored on Civilian (Merge), the superb third full-length from the Baltimore-based duo she founded with Andy Stack. Little did they know the LP's 10 songs would provide the first opportunity to put Wasner's lyrical feet to the fire.
After recording in Baltimore, the duo turned over the LP's mixing process for the first time to someone not actually in Wye Oak. Wasner and Stack spent six days in Dallas with producer John Congleston (Shearwater, St. Vincent), and the guitarist/singer confessed she approached "nervous breakdown territory" when Congleston told them each day to come back in "five or six hours" while he worked his analog magic on their songs.
"Relinquishing all control to someone who was at that time essentially a complete stranger was a huge leap of faith," Wasner chuckles, admitting she suffers from what Congleston termed "completion anxiety." "I'm trying to get past it, and let things exist as documents of a certain time, and a certain place and moment, rather than trying to make them into this ultimate thing."
The leap of faith was rewarded because Civilian's songs still resemble semi-feral animals. One minute they're all sweetness riffs and wistful organ-wash melodies, then, often foreshadowed by Stack's ticking-bomb beats, they suddenly roil into explosive bridges and soaring codas highlighted by Wasner's feedback-friendly guitar fireworks. Concentrating on first impulses and dialing back Wye Oak's tendencies to "tweak and fiddle," as Wasner puts it, does more here to capture the band's cathartic live show - and catharsis, too, was Civilian's purview.
"Without getting too personal, I will say there was a lot of living that had to be done in order for these songs to even exist," Wasner says. "The making of it was very much like a cleansing process for me, so it's really nice to have what is almost a totem of what I've been through and accomplished, and what we're capable of."
Blurt spoke to the 24-year-old Wasner the day before the duo was to leave for a short run of Euro dates. It was just the start to what she predicted would be a long year away spent away from family, friends and the town and its burgeoning music scene she and Stack feel so honored to be part of.
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BLURT: So you made this record with John Congleston -how'd that come about?
JENN WASNER: (Andy and I) both thought that he had a really good way with finding space with heavily layered songs. We have a tendency in the studio, maybe because of the forced sparseness of our live show, to go all out in tracking. But I wanted to make a record that had space to it, that didn't seem just like a wall of sound and textures; a little bit of sparseness, even if it was only a perception of sparseness. John has an uncanny knack for making space in recordings, for providing atmosphere. We felt he'd be a great fit, and it turned out to be true.
We did the basics in Baltimore with Mickey and Chris Freeland at Beat Babies studio. We did our last EP (2010's My Neighbor/My Creator) there, where they did the Lower Dens record, which I loved. Then we did overdubs ourselves, and took it down to Dallas. So, yeah, for the first time ever, we just threw our hands up and said, ‘yeah, okay, here we go.' That was one of the hardest things we've ever done, because we have trouble letting go, and this record was, in part, about learning to let go. In the moment I was kind of approaching nervous breakdown territory because mixing is traditionally for me a really tough time. I have a really hard time seeing through all the work that we've been doing and all the time that we've been spending on it, to see the finished product. So relinquishing all control to someone who was at that time essentially a complete stranger was a huge leap of faith. There were definitely some moments of panic. But we really trusted him. We had a lot of say in the mixing, but his mark is all over it. Looking back and being able to see the final product, he did a fantastic job.
That process seems so...mysterious.
It's a mystery to me. It's amazing to watch, takes years and years of experience, and talent. We'd give him the sessions of a song for the day, and he'd be like, ‘okay, split, I'll call you in five or six hours, I'll have a basic mix.' Then we'd come back and spend a few hours together tweaking the mix he made. So for the most part what he did remained a total mystery. There were moments when Andy and I would be like, ‘how did you do that?' And he'd say, ‘I'm not telling you.' There are ways, but I can't say I know what they are even after working with him.
I read where Andy called it ‘scary new territory' for you guys...
We were basically complete strangers, so to hand over this thing that meant so much to both of us and that basically amounted to the culmination of two years of work for me, and what I figured was pretty much my best collection of songs to date - yeah, scary. I'm a complete control freak - I'm not necessarily proud of it, but I'm aware of it. The fact of the matter is that there are people out there like John, this is their real talent, this is what they do. I feel like in the future, I want to be a little more open about working with people and allowing them to do what they do best and understanding what I do best and sticking to that.
How long were you in Dallas?
Six days. It was terrifying. That was all we could afford. Going into it John said, ‘we'll make it happen.' He said he's mixed full records in a day. It's all about how long you spend on stuff. We probably averaged one or two songs per day, remixing them. The other thing about John, but a total surprise to us, he works entirely analog, he's making these mixes on the board, then prints them to tape, then they're done. So if you want to remix it, you're starting from scratch. We're used to working in the modern ProTools realm, where you mix a song and then if you hear something you don't like about it you just open up the session and fix it, and it takes 10 seconds. He said, ‘I believe that more options, and the infinite ability to constantly tweak and re-tweak, does not necessarily make better records. I think you're first impulse is usually your best, so I'm going to force you guys to make decisions about things on the spot, and you're just going to have to go with it.'
That was the ‘scary new territory' Andy was talking about, because when it comes down to it, we're just tweakers and fiddlers, and we're used to having time to sit back and take it with us and go, ‘oh, we can just turn this one thing down real quick' -- anything's possible. But once you print that sucker to tape and you clear the board - that's it, that's what you have. There were a couple times when we did that and we thought ‘that's going to be a remix and another half-day.' And when you're working on a limited schedule, deciding whether the tiny thing you're obsessing over is worth another half-day of remixing, or if you should just live with it - those kinds of decisions were new for us.
In the end I'm really proud of the way it worked out, because if we had been mixing ourselves I know that there would be things - many things - that would be very different about it. And if we had, even with John, the option to tweak things, it would've sounded different. But it's a moment in time - it could go an infinite number of ways, and at a certain point you kind of have to call it finished, and let it be what it is. He helped us do that, and I learned from him that at a certain point you have to understand it's done. He had a really cool phrase for it, he called it ‘completion anxiety,' which I really like and like to keep in mind now because I know that I suffer from ‘completion anxiety' with pretty much everything I do because I'm kind of a perfectionist. I'm trying to get past it, and let things exist as documents of a certain time, and a certain place and moment, rather than trying to make them into this ultimate thing.
Sounds like it had some reverberations for the future, too.
Oh, certainly. I mean, I don't think we'll ever make a record by ourselves again. It's onward and upward from here. If anything, I'm interested to see what it's like to work with a producer from start to finish. We're trying to change it up and find the more interesting and exciting way to make records.
Did you find the analog to be ‘warmer,' as the general consensus goes?
There are a lot of different ways to achieve that warmth and that kind of sound. I'm by no means one of those people who are going to say that technology is cold and dead and harsh-sounding always, and that digital recordings can never sound warm. I think beautiful sounding recordings can be made with digital interface. Obviously tape and a board, they sound a certain way and provide a certain feel, but I'm not an absolutist. We didn't record to tape, we just mixed to tape, and it was really great to have that option. If we had the money and the time to make a record entirely on tape, I'd love to see what that process is like. But generally speaking, you can make great sounding records anywhere, and in any way. And you can make great records that don't necessarily sound good - I like records that sound like shit sometimes. I like the lo-fi shit too. I just think it's knowing how to work within the means you have and making something interesting and exciting with what you're working with.
In the original tracking, did you try to change things up to match the live show sound, or were you still trying to get as many textures into the equation?
If anything, we were trying to limit ourselves. It's just our gut impulse to layer as much as we can because we're so excited to have the options -- ‘what about this?' or ‘or how ‘bout trying that?' - just because they're available. In the past, we just haven't edited ourselves in any way in that regard - ‘okay, just pile it on, see what happens!' This time we made a concentrated effort toward, not necessarily sparseness, because I think it ended up being a pretty lush record, but just making sure that if something's in there there's a reason for it. ‘Is this necessary, does this have a place, does it play a part?' In the past we'd be, ‘how ‘bout a few layers of noisy guitar?' This time we made a concentrated effort writing parts and editing down to only what we thought was absolutely necessary and making sure what was in there was appropriate.
That's tough for us because we spend so much time rehearsing the live show. It's not quiet, and it's not sparse, but to us we do feel somewhat limited by it. So it's only natural for us to kind of push it in the studio. But I'm happy that we took the extra time and effort to edit things out as opposed to just leave everything in.
It feels like the work of a more experienced band.
I hope so, shit. It feels good to hear that. We made this record kind of quickly - when I say it's the product of a couple years of work, the actual songwriting came in a really brief period of time, a couple of months. And the recording was a month, and the mixing was six days. For us, that's really brief. But the work that I'm thinking of when I say that is just learning how to be a band -- playing shows, recording things. Just being more experienced is exactly what it felt like. Going into the process, learning from mistakes we've made, regrets we've had with recordings we've made in the past.
And without getting too personal, I will say there was a lot of living that had to be done in order for these songs to even exist. So I'm really proud of myself for writing them. I'm happy with the recording but even more than that I'm really happy with where I was able to go, writing-wise. I'm just really happy that they exist. It's great to be a songwriter or artist because you have this permanent documentation of the things that have affected you most in your life, so I look back on this record and see a somewhat different version of myself, for sure. But the making of it was very much like a cleansing process for me, so it's really nice to have what is almost a totem of what I've been through and accomplished and what we're capable of. I'm happy to finally see it come to fruition.
To be continued tomorrow. In Part 2, Wasner delves into the nature of her songwriting, about being on the road and the "tour bubble," her city Baltimore, The Wire, and more. A version of this article also appears in the latest print issue (#10) of BLURT.
[Photo Credit: Natasha Tylea]
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