Page 38 - Black Velvet Issue 94

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larly with previous album, ‘Kids In The Street’ come out, but it’ll come out later, when we can and stuff. At the end of the day, music’s the only
seeing the band really stretch themselves soni- present it in a way that people will understand thing I know. My time off is just doing music in a
cally. As Mike says though, they haven’t specif- what it’s trying to say, as opposed to thinking different way. It’s fun to do a creative thing in a
ically wanted to fit into just one box, and new we’re the ones in that song saying the things different way, and that’s producing bands, for
songs ‘Sweat’ and ‘Close Your Eyes’ really show that are in the song.” me.
that, being very different to each other. We’ve noticed this in other songs from other “During that time we were still playing shows
“The two songs we’ve put out; ‘Close Your bands. Sometimes lyricists choose to write a here and there. It’s one of those things where
Eyes’ and ‘Sweat’, those sum up exactly what’s song from another person’s point of view, some- we’ve gotten to do everything we could have
going on with us musically. It’s almost an identity one completely different, and the identity of who dreamed of, so there’s definitely a contentment
crisis musically as much as the video shows with the song is about can be misunderstood. Is what of, if it did end, well, that was awesome. And
pictures. Then, whatever comes to us, that’s is being sung in the song what the singer is that’s kind of what let us have the time off, know-
what we write.” going through himself – or is it from the perspec- ing that we were happy with what we’ve done,
The band have recorded five songs in total, tive of someone else? This, however, is similar and if we don’t do it again, we’re content. We’ll
at the time of writing, for the next All-American
Rejects album. “We’ve got some more in the
works, and each one of them is pretty vastly dif-
ferent to the others,” says Mike. “It’s going to be
a crazy mixed bag and hopefully people will be
on board. I know some people won’t, and some
people will pick and choose which songs they
like, but we’re cool with that too. We don’t want
to stifle ourselves in any way.”
One of the songs that has been recorded is
‘Send Her To Heaven’. “That one’s probably one
of the more straight rock songs we’ve done in a
while. It’s very Pixies-influenced. Tyson’s been
writing a lot of story songs. This one’s about a
burn-out girl making her way through life in the
worst possible way and it’s got a cool mood to
it. We started playing it live on the tour we’ve just
done with Dashboard Confessional. All the guys
in their crew and the band seemed to really like
it, so that was a cool thing. I always think that
live it’s hard to get across a song, especially a
new song, when we’re still figuring out how to
play it. But the response we got was really pos-
itive and encouraging, so hopefully they’ll like
the recorded version too.”
Each song on the album is being recorded
with a different producer. “The whole idea was,
we’ve burnt ourselves out on ‘Alright, we’re
going to pick a producer, we’re going to spend
months with one person in the same room mak-
ing the whole album,” explains Mike. “It worked
for us before, obviously, and it works for every
band, because that’s the normal thing, but the
idea of that can be kind of draining, and so we
thought, we’ll challenge ourselves and keep it
much more straightforward by ‘every song we’re
picking a different producer and giving ourselves
two days a song’, and we have to go in there
and knock it out. We don’t know what we’re
walking into because we either haven’t met the
producer or one of us has talked to the person
briefly, and it just kinda keeps us on our toes.
Each producer brings their different musicality
to it. It’s something to keep us excited and keep
us fresh and not burn us out, and so far it’s
worked great.”
nother fairly new song from the band, is
A‘DGAF’, AKA ‘Don’t Give A Fuck’, which
the band threw into the musical stratosphere last
year. “We played it live but we didn’t release it,”
says Mike. The band are unsure whether this to what actors do when playing the parts of char- wait until we really want to do it again and that
song will be on the new album. “That’s been a acters. And maybe Tyson sees other characters makes it better than trying to force it to stay rel-
debate. We wanted to have something new to for his songs now after playing other roles in the evant or just feeling like we have to constantly
play when we went on tour with Blink-182 last likes of Parenthood, Love and Money and Miss be putting things out. It just makes it really nice
year, so it was the first song that we came up You Already, to name just three. and we do want to come together to actually
with, and it’s fun. I think it’s a really catchy song While Tyson has been acting, Mike has have the inspiration to do it, rather than feeling
and I really love the lyrics, but the lyrics are very found himself at home in the recording studio, we need to force it.”
tongue-in-cheek. They’re sung from the per- producing music for other artists.
spective of a different person, of this shithead Of the time the band took away from the ne of the releases Mike worked on was
person. But I found that most people aren’t lis- road, Mike says, “I needed a hiatus from touring OMasked Intruder’s ‘Love And Other
tening to the lyrics close enough to get the irony if nothing else, definitely. We’d gone so hard for Crimes’ EP. He co-produced this EP with Roger
of it. That’s kind of why we shied away from re- so long. It was just mentally and physically of Less Than Jake. He had met Masked Intruder
leasing it as one of the first things with this draining at that point. It was nice to be at home through friends. “When they wanted to do this
record. We didn’t want people to not understand for a couple of years for the most part, being new EP they asked me to co-produce it. It’s
it. It seems like that was the case, people able to establish a life outside the band, and pur- been fun. I’ve always loved that kind of music,
weren’t getting the joke of it, so it’ll probably sue other things. I’ve produced some records so to get into that world and be able to work with
THE ALL-AMERICAN REJECTS