Band of Horses’ Ben Bridwell on Embracing ‘Wack-Ass Style’
The night before speaking to Rolling Stone, Ben Bridwell went out to a concert and stayed up “late as crap.” On the morning of the interview, the Band of Horses frontman took his daughters to school (he has four) and went to a doctor’s appointment. “I got a mole removed, because I’m getting old as hell,” he says. But getting older has made Bridwell more comfortable with himself and his songwriting, which is evident on Band of Horses‘ new album Why Are You OK.
Bridwell struggled for months to write the follow-up to 2012’s Mirage Rock, which he felt featured stilted performances and some insincere lyrics. “I was stuck, like, ‘How many more teenage dorkazoid stories can I share?'” he says. But after encouragement from friend Rick Rubin (who told Bridwell, “You got this, dog” after hearing early efforts), Bridwell wrote several gems, including “Dull Times/The Moon,” about the aging process and raising kids. Bridwell says the songs recapture the emotionally raw charm of his band’s earliest work. One reason: he played guitar in the studio after largely setting it down last time. “Maybe it’s getting older,” he says. “But I like my wack-ass style.”
How are you feeling about the new record, coming off of Mirage Rock?
Well, I feel damn great about it. I think all 12 songs serve a good purpose. It doesn’t seem too long-winded. After that last record, I wanted to kind of flip the coin to the other side and make something a bit different. With Glyn [Johns, Mirage Rock producer], we just did it in such a raw performance aspect. With this one, I just wanted to taste the other side of record-making, which is like pore over something possibly too long and hone every little minute detail, and I think has been beneficial. We really tried to get everything as raw as can be and live as can be on that last record. On this one, I’d be surprised if there are two instruments ever playing at the same time.
How’d you decide to take that approach?
That’s to Jason Lytle’s credit, the fellow that produced the record. That’s how he wanted to record. With the last record, we didn’t even use, like, click tracks or anything. With this one we really kind of spazzed over every single damn detail of it. It was exactly the opposite approach as the last one for sure.
The overdubbing approach gets a bad rap. Most bands say, “The problem was that we were in separate studios.”
Do people still harp on that?
Well, I was just reading about Blink-182 and they were talking about how before they broke up, they recorded their last album in separate studios.
Oh, god. I better watch my ass. Holy shit. No, that’s funny, though. I think that anything goes now, nowadays – a great record can be one person in their bedroom creating everything on synthesizers, or I don’t think there’s any rules. There’s less rules as we go, you know?