Built To Spill

It’s complex. It mostly arose out of financial stuff, but there’s other reasons too. Making a record as a three-piece was a creative decision. Well, it was more a logistical thing. It just went a lot faster. You get a lot more work done as a three-piece and I kind of knew what I wanted to do; I was pretty focused on what I wanted it to be like. And then that stirred up some feelings about playing as a three-piece and the kinds of music we could make.

I imagine it’s both fun and challenging to be playing without the security provided by another couple of guitarists. It forces you to work harder and do things that you probably haven’t done in songs you’ve been playing for many years.

Absolutely. Oh yeah I have to work hard. I practiced a tonne to get ready for this tour. It was a challenge, but it was also fun and rewarding. You don’t really know, when you’re playing, what it sounds like out in the audience. But with three guitar players you have no idea what it sounds like out there – you have no idea when you’re playing a guitar solo if it can even be heard by half the people. So the three-piece is so much more focused where you feel like what you’re doing matters and is being heard. With the five-piece sometimes I would get lazy and let the other guys hold down the fort. I think the whole band was a little lazy. You guys will get pretty good shows because I feel like me and the rhythm section have gotten a lot tighter playing as a three-piece.

In some ways the guitar playing on Untethered Moon is very playful. In each song there’s a root track – a riff or a chord progression – but then washes of guitar or rushes of volume come in through the left or right hand speaker, and lead parts echo or pre-empt vocal melodies. Adding these guitars parts sounds like a lot of fun, but it’s pretty precisely managed. Is there a lot of fine-tuning? 

The main thing with this record is we wanted to keep it stripped down as much as possible. We’ve actually had the intention of doing that for the last few records. Definitely the last two records we wanted to make pretty much live, and then over the course of things just end up overdubbing a lot of stuff. Sometimes because the stuff needs it, sometimes because of insecurity – thinking “Is that even good enough?” or even trying to bury my voice under guitars. So this time I wasn’t going to let any insecurities lead me to make those sorts of decisions.

Sam Coomes [producer] was also helpful because he embraced the whole idea of keeping it simple, so he could keep us on task. This time it was just more about, “This is what we are. I’m not going to try to do something a million times to try to get it perfect or try to layer tonnes of stuff because I can.” We wanted it to be more visceral, more of an urgent sounding punkish record. I wanted it to sound like some kind of punk record from the ’70s.

It’s not completely raw. There is a fair amount of additional guitar work – new lines or sounds that pop up through each song – but the vocals are just as important to the songs. In the past did you prioritise the guitar playing and think of the vocals as a sidenote?