Marty Crandall, Joe Chiccarelli, James Mercer and Me
The new record by the Shins, Wincing the night away, comes out this Tuesday.
I'm super excited, as this is by far the biggest engineering credit for me so far. These guys were great to work with and were about the farthest you can imagine from being Prima Donnae (or pre-madonna?).

I always marvel at the constant interplay and balancing act between composing and studio experimentation. Sometimes you get people recording songs before they've even written the lyric. To me this is nuts. It seems like the posture is: "Oh, I just come up with something at the last minute...whatever comes into my head."....Well, it usually sounds like it.....In my opinion, the best writing takes work and focus - even the songs that seem to come out easily require your attention and patience to get them down on the page. There are nuances in the music which have to be informed by what's going on in the vocal line.

Where I'm going is this: James came into the sessions pretty fully prepared as far as having the songs written. In fact he had already recorded at home some of the elements of each song - a vocal and a guitar part, the steel-drum-sounding keyboard part on Red Rabbits.....Yet there was also quite a lot of room - meaning openness and willingness on the part of James and the band - for experimenting with forms, sounds, rhythms and other elements.....

I have to say, having a lot of room for experimentation can also, for some folks, lead to getting mired in too many options. Producer Joe Chiccarelli [you have got to see his credit list; it's HUGE and varied] really kept things on track, getting the home-recorded tracks to mesh with the live-in-studio parts and all the guest musicians.

This past week, I've been doing some behind-the-scenes work as the Shins get ready for TV appearances and touring.....Look for some great remixes coming out soon, including at least one by DangerMouse.