*Caught In The Shedlights
Simon has spent much of the previous year converting the shed in his backyard into everyman’s secret desire: a den. Not only does he festoon it with comfy sofas, a drinks fridge and a play station but he also builds a recording booth in the corner. It is a separate wooden structure with a carpeted floor and walls stuffed with sound insulating materials. He even builds a small window into the side of it so there is a sight line between the talent and the recording engineer. It’s big enough to house a small drum kit and Simon begins the shed’s recording history by putting one in it and thrashing away to the best of The Jam and ELO.
Hang out in the shed for more than five minutes and its utter brilliance becomes apparent. There is not one straight line anywhere in it. You can drink and smoke to your hearts content and wail like a banshee with haemorrhoids in the booth without disturbing anyone except yourself (see the I Know A Place film clip). In short, it has bags of character that has already begun filtering through into Simon’s home recordings. It becomes obvious that the new Major album has to be recorded here at all costs (i.e. none).
So, it’s late October 2005 and the drums have been recorded. With some good advice from Pete at Goose, Miles has edited all the drum tracks (unaware that this would be just the beginnings of his epic struggles with juggling a band in a box). It’s now time for the guitars. Jarrod gets all his rhythm parts down pretty quickly what with his solid timing and good beefy sounds. Nigel is a quick and attentive Pro Tools operator so progress is fairly rapid even though the only day everyone can give to recording is Sunday. Little does anyone know that these Sundays will drag on for another fourteen months.
*Setbacks #1
It’s late January 2006 and Miles returns to Sydney from a three-week trip to Europe. The sessions have hit a snag. There’s been a bit of a stoush between Nigel and Danny over some aspect of the recording process and the atmosphere has become somewhat fraught. Nigel continues helping out for a little while longer but eventually decides he wants his Sundays back. He gives everyone plenty of notice thereby allowing Dan to get his laptop revved up a bit so that the band now have the freedom to record themselves. Nigel still helps out by taking the occasional panicked phone call regarding technical issues but it’s now just the band and the shed left to breed a monster.
Simon begins putting down his bass parts and christens the shed, Shabby Road. Things start moving again and in an extra session at Miles’ place, Simon works out a beautiful bass-line for Sunburn. It dances beautifully around the chords and settles the song into a very cruisey groove. One Sunday, Dan and Miles head into Shabby Road and try to speed things along by recording Dan’s vocal for What’s The Attraction? There seems to be some spark missing and Dan’s not happy with the take. On reflection everyone seems to feel that the ultra-strident rock n’ roll histrionics from the demo version are not cutting it and that something more groove oriented needs to be introduced. Dan comes up with a great call and response, Stonesy-type guitar part for the chorus section but is still unhappy with the verses.
Then, Dan has another crack at the vocal and records a completely different melody for the verses. Everyone loves it and seems to feel it suggests more of a Flaming Lips treatment. Miles, in particular, seems to be hearing something different in his head and takes the session home to work on.
*Rearranging The Furniture
Late in 2005, Miles decided to take a scalpel to his old song, DOOK. Live, the band had always played it with an almost Living End guitar assault. It sounded great for the ‘That’s good enough’ chorus part but lacked some lightness in the verse. Jarrod added some great 12 string guitar to give it some bounce and sparkle and then Miles came up with a string of Madness-style piano parts. It seemed to give it all a bit more feelgood warmth. The most arresting change to the arrangement came straight after the big introduction when Miles cut the band out completely leaving the first verse sung over a fake orchestral backing. It was almost like stopping everything after it had just started. Where was the momentum?
It’s now the New Year and everyone has come around to the idea and so begins Miles’ regular forays into ‘Taking things too far-land’ where he goes home and butchers the tunes in some way and then brings them back in to often nonplussed silence. In his eagerness to surprise the listener he sometimes sacrifices too much in the way of normal momentum and the others have to gently rein him back in. Other times he stands his ground and this is nowhere more evident than on What’s The Attraction?
After Dan’s revamping of the verses, Miles decides that the new melody seems like a really good hook and so pre-empts it by playing it on a sitar sample he finds on his computer. He replaces a section of drums with a four-on-the floor techno kick drum and then, once again, pulls the entire band out for the ‘Cos you’re gorgeous, funny and smart as a shine’, replacing it with an organ and orchestral patch: “That way the tension is ramped up much higher and you can feel that the chorus is coming but you’re not sure when. When it finally kicks in it’s that much more powerful, in my opinion”. Everyone hates the techno kick drum, of course, and Miles agrees to take it out (which he never does) but everyone seems to like the ‘bar band from Venus’ way it’s progressing.
Go To Part Three