RAIN’S PARADE papercranes
Aug 25, 2011
A fleet of friends helps Rain Phoenix make Babies. Check the sexily-mysterious videos, below.
BY SELENA FRAGASSI
Smack dab in the middle of papercranes' recent album, Lets Make Babies in the Woods (Manimal Vinyl), is a regaling trumpet solo. A stoic salute to the unwavering vocals of band commander Rain Phoenix, the horns on standout track "Dust Season" are even more curious when you consider the soldier behind it: Flea - as in the Red Hot Chili Peppers' bassist.
"It's not necessarily what he's known for but I knew he loved playing trumpet and was in school for it at the time," says Phoenix of the long-time friend, an acquaintance of her late brother River, who she joined on tour as a backup vocalist before pursuing her own songwriting. "It's interesting how you don't necessarily approach somebody knowing why until they're there." In actuality, Phoenix's belief in her intuition, from artistic collaborators to a fine-tuned recording process, helped make Babies an even more impressive and introspective reproduction than her first-born, 2006's Vidalia.
"The only thing I was sure about on this record is that we'd experiment," she says, "and I didn't second guess it, even if it made me feel vulnerable." Phoenix was so strict about the stream of consciousness process that a newly formed team of co-conspirators (among them, Plexi/Sweethead's Norm Block, Jenny O., For Squirrels' Andy Lord, and even guest cellist Dermot Mulroney) were not allowed to bring their work home with them at the end of the day.
"I didn't want anyone to have the track and listen to it to come up with a part. I wanted them to just walk in, hear it, and play what came to their mind," Phoenix notes of the inaugural papercranes recording sessions, held in a friend's garage in L.A. "It was less about the smoke and mirrors of what you could do, and more about the soul of the song, regardless [of whether] it was defective somehow."
Lucky for Phoenix, her Babies turned out to be a perfect delivery.
Go here to read the BLURT review of papercranes' Babies album.
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