February « 2011 « THE ANSWERING MACHINE The Answering Machine

// 8. Rules

February 28th, 2011

By the time that ‘Rules’ was written, I had begged, borrowed and stolen enough recording equipment to have a fairly modest home studio setup. I had turned my spare room into an ‘ideas room’, where I’d go and strum my guitar, safe in the knowledge that I had the ability to record a rough demo of it there and then. ‘Rules’ was one of those tracks that just wouldn’t leave me alone. I guess if I was being romantic, I could say ‘it found me’ instead of ‘me finding it’. I can safely say that this situation has never happened to me before (or since), but I found myself heading to bed early one night. I crashed at about 10pm, but tossed and turned for a few hours, there was something inside me itching to come out. At around 12:30am I jumped out of bed and headed downstairs, out of earshot from my girlfriend sleeping upstairs.

I spent the next couple of hours sitting in my kitchen with an acoustic guitar, and this song literally poured out of me! It was really strange, because I didn’t feel the need to force any part of it, it just kinda wrote itself. I’d play the idea through from start to finish, then repeat the whole thing again, changing melodies and humming all the arrangements out loud. I recorded the rough parts into my phone, to record a demo the following morning.

I was reluctant to build the instrumentation up at first, as with pretty much all of The Answering Machine’s songs we’ll share out ideas and everyone has their take on things. But this song was different, it almost wouldn’t leave me alone until the demo was done. So I ended up layering my basic guitar and vocals with all the other interesting sounds on there. I recorded some glock and melodica, shakers, drum machine and a shimmering lead guitar. It’s a very basic recording actually, quite refreshingly ‘acoustic’ for an Answering Machine track. I think I was listening to a lot of Grizzly Bear at the time, which inspired the strange vocal melody in the Middle 8, as well as the layered vocals throughout.

I was kinda shy about sharing my song with the rest of the band. I was 100% willing for them to leave the song out of The Answering Machine’s catalogue. Or at very least, I was open to us stripping the song back down to its raw form, and rebuilding it with their own take. However, Pat, Ben and Gemma were incredibly supportive of the song! It was really weird, because there was me all sheepish, saying things like “ah, you’ll probably hate it but…”, and they were buzzing off it, and really promoting it as a front-runner for the album. I’m really very grateful to them for being so supportive of the song!

The final version you hear on the album is the exact same demo I recorded on that cold Winter morning in my spare room. It’s not only the first recording of the song, but it’s pretty much the first time I had heard the song properly, let alone the rest of the band. What you hear on the record is literally the morning after the night it was written! There’s something incredibly honest and open about us using this version, the demo. It’s 100% in its rawest form, and really does capture the moment. We didn’t even try and re-record it, there was no point. I actually attempted to re-record my vocals (as I’d originally sung them through some shitty microphone), but nothing sounded as good as the original, so it was scrapped. I think it was Pat who was the most outspoken about keeping the demo for the final album, and I thank him for it every day, it was definitely the right thing to do.

Ben helped in the mixing stage to really ‘scuzz up’ the recording (which was all recorded fairly clean). He had an idea of passing the drum machine through a distorted effect, and pass everything through some lo-fi effects to give the song a distinctive retro feel, like some old tape recording from the 70s.

We now use ‘Rules’ as a good example of the album’s recording process as a whole. If something wasn’t broke, there was no point in trying to fix it!

Martin

// 7. Hospital Lung

February 27th, 2011

In October 2009 the band were lucky enough to live in New York for a month. We went there for the CMJ music festival but decided to hang around so we got ourselves a residency at a really cool bar called CoCo 66 Where we played every week. One morning I woke up in our Brooklyn town house to find Martin (who I was sharing a room with) gone. His acoustic guitar had gone too. I got up and dressed and found him outside in the garden area playing through an idea he’d just had. This idea went on to become ‘Hospital Lung’. I remember been struck by the beauty of the chord sequence which had a Jonny Marr quality to my ears in that not only were they beautiful but kinda tinged with a deep sadness. But then there was the riff, which was like pure euphoria. I grabbed my guitar and we sat there playing around, I learnt the main riff he’d written and we continued to mess around until I had my verse and chorus parts worked out. We ate breakfast and went downstairs to finish it off. Sat on our beds he sang me the melody he’d written, which was haunting and sounded like it was coming from some far off New York Subway. That sat with me and I started to scribble down lyrics about the city and how it made me feel. This all played out in a hospital metaphor, I think because of the opening line where I wrote about how I ended up in this alien city that I felt so at home in ‘I am a transplanted heart, meant for the shadows of skyscrapers, morning coffee and newspapers.’ The rest sprung from there and within half an hour it was done. It’s a really special song for us because it was written in New York, about New York which, as a city, has always been a bit of a romantic dream of ours. We demoed it in Brooklyn with a drum machine beat and some new guitar pedals that we’d all bought from a music shop in Williamsburg. We then took that demo to a studio down town, 42nd street, and tried to record an album version on the top floor of this amazing skyscraper. Although the recording was good, it was a tad too experimental (we literally threw EVERYTHING at it, at one point Ben was adding percussion in the form of empty Stella bottles). This was no bad thing however, all that experimentation made us realise what was initially good about the song and when we came to record it in Manchester with Martin producing we stuck to our guns and reverted back to the initial demo for reference. The song was really completed for me by the synths that Ben added to the chorus and the textural stuff Martin did on the keys. Other than that though it was pretty perfect as it was because it’ll never sound as good as when it was first played on the back steps of that garden in Brooklyn.

Pat

// 6. Anything Anything

February 26th, 2011

This is my personal favourite on the album, but when we originally wrote the song I wasn’t convinced about it all, really didn’t see how it could be an album contender. Martin had these beautiful chords which he showed us, full of melancholy but beautifully delicate. We all set about putting our own parts to them and quickly set about recording a demo and somewhere along the line the whole thing started to sound a bit muddled, there was too much going on and the delicateness of the song had somehow been lost. I think Martin must have always believed in the song though and I’m so pleased that I kept my reservations to myself and let him get on with producing the album version. The song was stripped back to drums and rhythm guitar and then we slowly pieced together the rest. I remember putting down my bass parts and then leaving Pat and Martin for a few days to finish it off. When I came back for another listen I was absolutely astounded! For me (and this is only a personal opinion) this is Martin’s greatest production triumph. The strings used throughout seem to add to the melancholy and give it that old filmic style that was introduced in 3 miles. When the vocal harmonies in the chorus kick in it heightens the emotion even further with the narrator pleading for understanding. The outro, which leads into an interlude introduces the more experimental approach we’ve taken on this album showcasing our maturity and range of musical influences. I think this is the answering machine at our very best, finding our own sound and pushing ourselves musically and lyrically. Pat came up with this beautiful lyric about an apology from one mountaineer to his friend who he had to leave behind to save himself. I’m not sure if Pat had just watched ‘Touching the Void’ but I think it can interpreted in a literal way, or as a metaphor for any relationship where one person has chosen to walk away and leave the other out in the cold.

Gemma

// 5. Romantic & Square

February 25th, 2011

Romantic & Square is the only song on the record that was written before last year, in fact it was written before I was even in The Answering Machine. I remember hearing the original version on a cd of demos I was given when they were looking for a drummer and it stuck out as one of my favourites then.

In approaching this new recording we wanted to give the song a fresh feel and so the arpeggio synths that you hear at the start actually use to be Pats guitar part. The verse’s pretty much remained intact with the down stroked scuzzy guitars over ‘Mustafa beat’ the Drum machine with really cool tom toms samples that beep around your headphones, something that has always seemed trademark Answering Machine to me. We added Melodica to the prechorus and a simple linear guitar line to build into the chorus. This is the bit that changed the most as we went for a huge wall of sound with held guitar chords and a triumphant melodica/ organ line and a no holds bard thrashing live drum kit. I really like how quirky this song sounds, with the drum machine, scuzzy guitars and melodica bursting into this massive wall of noise. I also like how the lyrics are almost self reflecting or confessional and remind you of cold winters and autumns in Manchester. If I remember correctly Pat got the song title and chorus line from the etching on a Smiths vinyl so there you go. The song repeats through the same verse, prechorus, chorus pattern again and then its all over in minutes before you know its started.

We worked on this song during practise today and its sounding amazing so hopefully it will become a live favourite sometime soon.

Ben

// 4. 3 Miles

February 24th, 2011

This was the first song we wrote for the new album (except ‘Romantic and Square’, which is a remake of a really old song). It set the bar for the rest of the songs on the new album, and really helped to define our new sound. We’d taken a couple of months off after finishing promotion for ‘Another City, Another Sorry’, and at that moment, our new sound could’ve been one of a hundred genres. I think it just needed one solid idea to get the ball rolling.

The song began life as a 2-chord progression on my classical guitar. I found myself sitting at home, looping the intro guitar over and over. I know straight away whether an idea is a ‘keeper’ or not, and this was standing the test of time. Writing on an acoustic instrument allowed me to construct the song fairly easily, and I pieced together a fairly downbeat verse with an uplifting and poppy chorus. The chorus at the time reminded me of the band Death Cab For Cutie, which is no bad thing in our books.

I actually wrote out the lyrics fairly quickly after finishing the idea. Most of the time, I’ll co-write the lyrics with Pat or leave them solely to him, as he has a great gift of crafting a song lyric. But this song felt rather personal to me, and I guess I had some things I wanted to get off my chest. At the time, I’d been reading the book ‘A Million Little Pieces’ by James Frey (on Gemma’s recommendation). I was struck by his honesty and the desperation in his life. I tried to reflect elements of this in ’3 Miles’. To me, the song is more about a time when I had a lack of direction and a lot of misguidance as oppose to a straight up love song (though it does disguise itself nicely as this). It’s about an uncertainty of the future, something which I felt I shared with James Frey. In fact, a tiny piece of the lyric is a reference to the book (“…in faded newspapers and shards of glass”).

I remember heading into the rehearsal room to play the idea through to Ben and Gemma. Pat was caught up with some other business at the time, but I was like a kid on Christmas Day, so I wanted to share the idea straight away. Although the song’s structure and lyrics were in place, it needed a lot of development and changes to it’s dynamics to really bring the song to life. This came in the form of the amazing ‘indie-pop’ almost Motown rhythm that Ben and Gemma worked out. It’s what gives the song that character and personality all of it’s own. The ‘cherry on top’ for me was the Melotron string arrangement that Ben added to the chorus, inspired by one of his favourite artists, Sparklehorse.

The song has a really great nostalgic feel to me. Like staring at some old battered photograph, maybe from a bygone era. It just reminds me of a time gone by, a place I once loved, a place I want to go back to soon.

Martin

// 3. ANIMALS

February 23rd, 2011

There was nothing on TV, so one morning while still in bed I reached across for the acoustic guitar that I’d borrowed off a friend. Initially I was just messing around, playing songs I knew, trying to work out ones I didn’t but then I stumbled across the chorus chords for what was to become ‘Animals.’ If I’m honest, I forgot about them until we were about to play an acoustic show at a bar in Tokyo, Japan. Perhaps it was having an acoustic guitar in my hands again that reminded me, but I quickly showed Martin and he immediately started to play along, with (if I remember rightly) what is now the verse riff. That’s how ‘Animals’ started life. After Christmas we all got together to complete the song, throw ideas around and work on demoing it. Gemma added the rolling bass, Ben put down a really tight beat that has become one of my favourite drum tracks on the record and Martin added the lead guitars and melody arrangement. The original demo had more acoustic guitars which lent it a more David Bowie quality to it. I think this is where the song (at least in my mind) developed this dream-like characteristic, that other-worldly feeling. So when Martin emailed me suggesting the song should be called ‘Animals’ I got to work on the lyrics with all this in mind. The lyrics (for me a least) tell a story of metamorphosis, both physically and mentally. This definitely wasn’t intended as a drugs reference but I guess there is a certain ‘acid’ metaphor to be had in that the world the two characters escape is the everyday one and the world they come inhabit is a semi-dangerous make believe environment. I guess it’s a bit like that film ‘Inception’ they have somehow created a dream-world to live in, where space and time can bend and alter. During the album session the song took on a new dimension from the demo which saw Martin add heavily fuzzed electric guitars to all the acoustics and mixed the two together (it became something of a trademark of his production). Eventually we decided to strip the acoustic guitars out of the verses which lead to the song becoming more sparse and edgy. On the Roland Juno Martin added this analogue ‘wind’ texture which gives the song a dream/nightmare like feeling in my mind and also contributes to the overall feel of the record as that noise pops up again in other songs. The organs in the breakdown were pulled forward in the mix so that they became a lead part (where as in the demo they were set back and not really featured) but even now when we play live and they bubble away on top of the track I get really excited. ‘Animals’ was one of the songs we sat on for longest but we’re all happy we saw it through as we are very proud of it. ‘Animals’ was released as the first single off ‘Lifeline’.

Pat

// 2. LIFELINE

February 22nd, 2011

There are some songs that take ages to realise their full potential and then there are those songs that just seem to write themselves in minutes; ‘Lifeline’ was definitely the latter. We had just finished writing a load of songs and were taking some time to demo them with our friend Oli from the band Howls. After about four days straight of recording we’d become a little frustrated and just wanted to let off some steam. We picked up our guitars with the aim of just having some fun and ‘Lifeline’ sort of appeared out of nowhere. Oli started off on the Juno with the rising chords and we all gradually joined in. The chorus came out first with Martin writing this great chord progression and Pat adding this little cheeky riff. Martin started playing this rhythmic part, which we switched to play on the bass and the body of the song ‘Lifeline’ was born. We were totally buzzing about it straight away and played it over and over dancing around our rehearsal room every time. It’s not often a song gives you that feeling so we knew it was pretty special. Martin added the vocal melody pretty much straight away. The chorus lyrics were originally intended as a guide but when it came to writing the rest of the lyrics they were a perfect fit. The title ‘Lifeline’ fell instantly into place for the title of the album.

When it came to recording it for the record we tried to capture the energy that was there when we first wrote it. We wanted there to be a lot of space in the verses, keeping the guitar sounds dry and punchy and stripping it down to bass drums and woodblock, so that when the chorus arrives the whole thing just goes massive. Martin added some incredibly high backing vocals (which I now have to try and replicate live) and the simplest of synth lines that has now become the main hook of the chorus and our very own indie disco anthem was formed.

Gemma x

// 1. MY LITTLE NAVY

February 21st, 2011

Our new album ‘Lifeline’ has been released today, so we thought we would take turns to individually take you through each track on the album that we are very proud of, a song a day.

I’m kicking things off with the opener, ‘My Little Navy’.

( I’m more of a musical guy, I leave all the lyrics and poetry to the others so if you have any questions regarding lyrics or in fact anything then leave a comment and I’m sure one of them will get back to you.)

So, ‘My Little Navy’, the first of the new album. I think the song almost acts like a scene setter, an introduction as to what is to come. It may also come as a curve ball to people who are used to our first album and its direct sound. It’s probably one of the few songs that we have done that acts as an atmospheric passage rather than a straight up pop song. It came from an idea that had been round for a while and always seemed to manifest itself at practises in inter song noodling or for want of a better word jamming.

Things kick off with a metronomic beat from our faithful drum machine ‘Mustafa Beat’, with an awesome dusty, reverby, Sparklehorse feel. After a few solo bars the guitars layer in with rhythmic harmony over one of Gemma’s trademark melodic baselines. The parts almost work in loops along with the drum machine. A single guitar note backed up by a vintage Juno synth give a hook that introduces each vocal passage. If I recall correctly the vocals are layers of Martin singing both falsetto and a more speech like lower harmony. We wanted the song to start with a very fragile feel that builds in intensity and the super high and vulnerable vocals help achieve this. As the second round of vocals come in we slowly faded in some sustained notes again on the Juno to add to the sense of suspense and put the whole chord structure on edge.

The song then launches into kind of semi-distorted guitars as the drum machine beat breaks down, with dreamy, reverbed out vocals which are layers of Martin again. Then my first bit comes in, the distorted drum kit. The recording of most of this album was done by Martin in our underground practise room in Manchester city centre, but to record the drums we had to go to our friend Robins studio in Stockport as we didn’t have enough Mics our equipment. This meant a solid 2 days of recording all the drum parts in a row before anything else is done. I remember doing this bit which is just separate drums recorded through ambient mics that Martin cut up and made into a loop. It was a weird thing at the time to record just one cymbal or one tom part and trust that it would sound okay when everything else was added. In mixing this part we panned drum separately so it’s a really good headphones moment on listening back.

The song then swells into a post rock wall if noise with pounding drums, screaming guitars and a euphoric synthesiser melody. If you really concentrate on the drums which are again looped into short beats they almost have a weird phase like effect. At first I wasn’t sure about this but am into it now. We added all sorts to this bit with loads of synth notes, sub bass and a robotic like keyboard sound we found somewhere. The idea was for a huge, fuzzy, heady sound without being too heavy or ‘rock’ and I think we pulled it off.

After this intensive passage the song gently winds down to held synth notes and a glockenspiel melody that contrasts the dry opening, like something has changed during the duration the last 3 minutes and won’t be quite the same for the rest of the album. I’m personally really proud of this track and think it sums up the dynamic and stylistic breadth of the album which follows it.

Hope you enjoy it too, one of the others will be back tomorrow to take you through track 2, ‘Lifeline’.



Ben

// LIFELINE ALBUM OUT NOW

February 21st, 2011

Hello everyone,

‘Lifeline’ is out now in the UK and available from your local record shop or digitally online.
We would like to say a massive thanks to everyone who pre-ordered the album and the bundle deals, you should be receiving your orders very soon if you have not already.

The bundle deal will be available until 28th Feb so if you still want one then get your order in quick. Albums with handmade bonus EP will still be available from the shop.

Buy ‘Lifeline’ on bandcamp here

Buy ‘Lifeline’ on itunes here

Buy ‘Lifeline’ and bonus disk direct from us here

Check back for more news and behind the scenes insights into ‘Lifeline’ coming really soon

The Answering Machine x


// LIFELINE SINGLE RELEASED TODAY

February 14th, 2011

Our new single ‘Lifeline’, is available for download from today, with B side ‘Animals (Nayonets Remix)’.
You can get it from the following links…

Bandcamp
Itunes

And remember you can still preorder the album before its release next week direct from us here.

Ben

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