The Charlatan (TC): The sound on your new album represents a bit of a departure from earlier records. Were there any specific reasons for that?
Alex Norman (AN): Nothing really, it was the second studio record we wanted to make. We liked All Day with It, but I think it was a bit too bright, a bit too polished. Considering
we are not polished or bright or with it so I think we wanted to make a record that more demonstrated our live show and was more fun, more, free and less pretty. We didn’t consciously say, ‘Let’s write reggae songs,’ or, ‘Let’s write these sort of songs.’ We just always sort of write all sorts of music because we’re fans of all sorts of music, from metal to pop to classical, so we just wrote a set of songs and these were the ones that fit best for the record. We wanted to make kind of a clash record – a little dirtier or a little edgier.
TC: You talk about the live show feel. What do you mean?
AN: Live shows are what we do best, I think. And it’s our favourite part of our band, when we perform. We’re a live band that’s where we’re most comfortable so we try to set up that sort of feeling in the studio as best as possible. A lot of the songs on this record were recorded live off the floor, where we all play together. It was the first time I had ever done it where we just played in the room together and got the drum track that way. A lot of times we got the drum and bass at the same time, which is really nice because we can lock them in real good, then you overdub the guitars. Some songs we recorded without the click track so that’s totally free-form from what we’re used to working with – shoestring budgets and time constraints. To not work with the click track seemed weird to us, impossible, strange. Our producer, Robert [Carranza], we told him that we were thinking about not using a click. He’s like, ‘Sure no problem.’ He was the first guy that ever said, ‘Yeah let’s do it.’
TC: You mention Robert Carranza, who has produced artists like Jack Johnson and Mars Volta.
What did he bring to the record?
AN: [Carranza] was really cool. He was a different sort of producer than we have worked with before. He doesn’t even like being called a producer, he prefers “glorified engineer.” He really wanted us to have a hand in how it was produced and we wanted that too. That’s why we have co-production credit on the record. He did bring a lot of experience.
More than that he brought a lot of stories. He told all sorts of Beastie Boys stories and Jack Johnson stories and Mars Volta stories. That was really cool. I think in a way that sort of put us in a place where we were more confident, we were working with this guy who knows all these people on a personal level.
TC: You guys just finished recording a video with Kardinal Offishal two days ago. How was that?
AN: It was awesome, it was a lot of fun. It was one of my favourite videos we’ve ever made. It was also one of the most challenging videos we’ve ever made. It’s a homage to an old hip-hop video, called “Drop” by The Pharcyde. We wanted to kind of recreate it but also bring it up a notch. Hardest part for me hands down was learning how to sing the song completely reversed. That took eight hours of me transcribing phonetically, and then about four or five days of just constantly trying to remember shit. It was just a lot of repetition. It sucked, it was like trying to do history homework, there was no equation, you just got to remember the dates, where it happened.
TC: What was the collaboration with Kardinal like?
AN: We wrote the song without a bridge, not because we wanted someone on it, just because I tend to write last minute. As we were playing it, when we didn’t have a bridge, we were like we should maybe get a hip-hop kind of bridge in here. And our first choice was let’s see if Kardi wants to do it. We’re from the GTA as well, we reached out to him for a while but we heard nothing from his management. Then on our absolute last day to do any vocals we got a call at around lunchtime and it was Kardinal’s manager, Mayday, and he said, ‘Yeah, Kardi wants to hear the track, send it over.’
So we sent it over and five hours later he wrote his part, he recorded it, he did all the backing vocals, he produced it, and it was done. It was pretty amazing actually. It’s an incredibly fast turnaround, but that just shows the talent and professionalism of Kardinal and that was only reinforced by meeting him and working with him on the video shoot. He was such a pro, so cool, just a really nice dude who was just there to have fun.
TC: You’re currently halfway through your Canadian tour. How has it gone so far?
AN: Really good, we’re doing it with USS – great band, hypes the crowd up. It’s just been really easy. The venues we’ve played have pretty much been easy. There are a couple of shitty venues out there that are kind of douche bags and a couple of shows shit the bed, but I can only count two. Won’t name names of course — Regina — but yeah it’s been pretty easy. We were fortunate enough to get kind of a sub-tour, with Three Days Grace, out in B.C. for these make-up dates they were doing because the Used couldn’t play the make-up dates. We’re kind of that band where if you don’t know who to bring, call illScarlett right now.