New Pornographers: Lo-Budget Canadian pop recording

I met John Collins just before the New Pornographers took the stage at Lee's Palace in Toronto. About a week after this interview, the album, Mass Romantic, won a Juno (Canadian Grammy) for Best Alternative Record. It may be the most fun you've had listening to a record in a long spell. This is a pop record through and through. Taking all of the best stuff from New Wave, '70s anthem rock and the best '80s singles will leave you somewhere in the vicinity. The band is made up of John Collins [Evaporators, Destroyer], Dan Bejar [Destroyer] , Neko Case [ex-Maow, Corn Sisters, and herself of course], Carl Newman [Zumpano, Superconductor], Kurt Dahle [Limblifter], and Blaine Thurier. John, along with the help of Darryl Neudorf and studio partner Dave Carswell, engineered Mass Romantic. John and Dave have also recently completed the new Destroyer record, Streethawk: A Seduction, which is slated for release on Misra Records shortly. The success of Mass Romantic is a testament to John, Dave, and Darryl who recorded it, and to Carl and Dan, who penned the tracks. This record continues to enjoy acclaim and unanimous praise wherever it lands. Mr Collins made the best of his gear and circumstances to create a hit record. What's more Tape Op than that?

Where did the recordings for Mass Romantic start?

We did four songs to begin with, thinking that Sub Pop, which was Zumpano's label, were interested... they sort of were I guess. So we did four songs early on. We were actually finished them three years ago, the mixes and everything.

Three years ago?

Yeah. We did the drums at the Miller Block, which is a studio in Vancouver run by Darryl Neudorf. Everything but the drums was done at my studio that I share with Dave [Carswell].

What did you do in terms of the drums? It sounds like there isn't a mic anywhere near that kit. Maybe just a room mic or something...

[laughs] I don't know what I'm doing. The mixing is kind of where the drum sound came from. The four songs that Darryl recorded the drums on, that's Fisher drumming. Fisher has one of those kits that John Bonham had. You know, drums from giant land. He is fully psychotic as a drummer. The only thing that anybody could watch when we played was this guy just destroying his kit. The sound is just his big sound. Of the last eight that we did, seven of them I did in our practice space one Friday night.

You did all those drums in one night?

Yeah. Kurt's a slick drummer. He just sits down and plays them. We'd do them three times and move on. I brought a couple of DA-88s and three mini Mackies and some basic mics. The drums are pretty low tech Well, I guess it's high-tech because of the digital machines and everything, but it was basically the bare minimum. I didn't use any compressors when I recorded it. I didn't bring any speakers. I was just, "We gotta get this on tape."

So you didn't monitor the drums when you were recording them?

No. It was stupid. There was loads of clipping all over the drums. The faders were down. With the mini Mackies, there's no way to bus all the mic preamps, so you just have to take them out of the insert points. The only gain control for that is the trim pots — I had the trim pots down all the way and I was still getting clipping. I had a set of headphones to check out the sound. They sounded alright, so we went for it. I don't know why it sounds big. I was just trying to make everything sound really grandiose. I had one Sony stereo microphone at the other end of the practice space room and I tried to use that a lot just to kind of fill out the sound of the drums. I really had some pretty thin sounds — using no compression, straight to digital tape. We used a click track becauseI knew we were going to be throwing it all on a computer and editing a lot of stuff. I had to buy a G4 Mac to play all the tracks back.

This is going to sound crazy, but to me it sounds a lot like the recordings the Giant Sand guys do. The drums are always big and wide open, the vocals are usually very present. Dave Fridmann [Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev] does that as well. Most folks seem to do one or the other...

I'm glad you think it sounds big and open. It's a total fucking nightmare, those songs sometimes. We have so many ridiculous things and I just can't help myself but double everything we record. Not only do we have all of these different lines that have to get shoehorned together, there's two or four of them. There's some songs that have 16 + vocal tracks. We had absurd amounts of things. I just don't have the brains to give everything its own absolute pristine space. I always have to accept that things aren't sounding really deluxe, so you have to play up the fact that you're going for some really nasty weird sounds. The similarity with the Giant Sand would be that they get some sounds and feature them. They do the big, open, dynamic sounding rock band in a room and then the massive overdub comes in a obliterates everything for a second and then goes away. Really dramatic studio jazz. I totally think that kind of thing is cool. I was trying to do that a lot. Take whatever live exciting sounds we had and contrast them with some really fake sounds, so you're always guessing.

Was the record mixed entirely on a computer?

All of the bed tracks were done to digital tape. The overdubs were all done on the computer. There was one trillion edits done to everything. It was mixed on a Mackie 24x8 mixer. I used a lot of automation in the software. We were moving at such a snail's pace that I just automated it all with my mouse.

Have you see the control surfaces for digital audio workstations that they're starting to come out with?

I really want one. One of those would be so cool. I think I'll hold out until they get one for FireWire.

There's box that MOTU just came out that's FireWire and has 8 analog ins and SPDIF. [the 828]

Kurt [Dahle] has been talking about that.

You could get a Powerbook and you've got a mobile studio.

Exactly. Or, buy two of them and do all of your tracking. I think they'll probably bring the price down on the 16 bit interfaces. I might get lucky and get some analog tape or something like that.

Do you have a tape machine?

I got a Revox 877 in the box, never used, at a church sale. Everything was in there — the foam packing, the manual. I don't think it ever got plugged in. I didn't even have dust on it. I used to go to church sales and garage sales every Saturday.

How were the vocals tracked?

It was pretty much exclusively [Audio-Technica] 4033s into an Alesis 3630 compressor and into the computer. When we were buying stuff, we just decided to get whatever the hot cheap item of the day was. We just wanted to get stuff that we could get good sounds with and record, record, record. We don't have the slightest hope of fixing anything ourselves. I'm not interested in cleaning heads if I don't have to. That's why we bought DA-88s, so we could just hit record and go play for two hours. When we mixed "Letter from an Occupant" we put Neko through a Furman compressor and turned it all the way up. It's very crunchy. It doesn't really work on a thick sound, but on a really streamlined sound, like her voice, it gets really crunchy.

How do you like the sound of the converters going into your computer?

You know what is weird about converters? I swear that it doesn't really matter. I did a recording with an artist friend of mine who just wanted to do some acoustic guitar playing. He bought an Imac and a little mini-Mackie. I just recorded him with my 4033 microphone into the Mackie preamp, and out to the ass of the iMac. It sounds really beautiful. We mixed it in a studio with Genelec's. We were A/B'ing it with all of these other sounds. It had an incredible signal to noise ratio — about 90 dB. I know that converters must matter...

For the stuff that I do, I don't think it makes that much of a difference. If you have a big heavy-duty studio, it's probably a selling point if you've got whole rack of Apogee converters.

I can hear the difference between the DA-88s and my computer interface. I'm kind of stubborn. I don't want to care. I want to be lo-fi.

I think it's so funny that you went into a swanko studio with a recording that entered via mini-jack.

And it sounded killer! The guy who was mixing it — his eyes were bugging out. Preamps are much more crucial in the chain than converters. Dave and I just bought a DBX tube preamp.

Is it one of those ones with a digital out?

It has it as an option. We didn't get it because we couldn't afford it.

I almost just want to track down an old recording console that has a bunch of old capacitors in it just to put a bit of circuitry between the microphones and the computer.

For sure. Any kind of circuitry can be interesting. I don't think digital gear is harsh really, but it is invisible. We often run stuff through the Revox without even hitting the tape and you can hear the circuit working. It just gives it a kind of character, good or bad — it doesn't matter after a while. Any character is good! That Alesis compressor is good, but it's so invisible.

The other redeeming feature of crappy equipment is there is no burden of proof when you're done recording. If you use really nice stuff and make a shit recording, then you're in deep trouble.

The first thing we did when Dave and I got our gear was for our friends who were an established band with a bunch of albums. They had zero money and we were ready to do it. The gave us $500 and we worked ten twelve hour days. We had one compressor which I didn't use once in the whole process of recording and mixing. I compressed all of the guitars that were already cranked through Marshalls. I was really lighting it up too, because I thought that I had better make the compressor work. I wound up with a total train wreck. Sure enough, it came out on vinyl and was the worst sounding album I've ever heard. It came out on a Spanish label and I was like, "Sorry guys..."

I'm sure someone will come up to you someday and tell you it's the best recording they've ever heard.

There's no way that's ever going to happen! I promise you. [laughs]

Sometimes the songs knock you out so much you're not too concerned with how it was recorded.

We tried. They don't hate us. They came back later and did some more with us. We did a much better job. 

Were they leaning over your shoulder when you were mixing saying, "That's not done is it?"

Yeah, they were doing that but we didn't know what else to do. They kept saying, "The drums sound kind of tiny...". So we went hmm... does the bass make them sound bigger?

I guess you can consider yourself redeemed with this record with regards to the drum sound.

I guess. Well, Darryl did an amazing job recording Fisher. "Letter from an Occupant" and the three others that he did have some pretty killer drum sounds. Those are just the sounds that Darryl got.

The reaction to the record has been so strong — part of that is always the recording, especially when it gets played on radio a ton.

When we were done I was pretty satisfied with every mix. The parts that sound like we were underfunded — that's sort of there. You hear the fact that it wasn't recorded through a Neve strip. We made up for it by making an extra nasty sound beside the nasty sound and then featured the one nice sound that we had right afterwards. I'm floored when people say they think that it sounds great. I don't think there's anybody out there who can get all of the sounds that they'd like to get.