When we last spoke, you said you were considering leaving Los Angeles. Now I see you’re based out of Nashville.
I did, and it was for the best. I loved LA. But the fact is, when you tour nine, ten months a year and you’re paying that kind of rent but not enjoying it, it’s kind of like, ah, it’s time to move on. So for the time being I’m in Nashville, and it’s been exceptional as far as the rent is cheap and there’s some great writers out there. So when I’ve got some time off I’ve been writing with a few bands and stuff. I’m not opposed to moving back to LA, because every time I go back there I miss it so much. But for now, Nashville is home.
You made the new album in Nashville.
Yes. Ironically enough, when I moved there I had no idea the new record was going to be made there. Brendan O’Brien came to us and said “Listen, you guys get to choose, I don’t care where we do it, we can either do it in LA or Nashville, but I want one or the other. And so the band talked, and we had done New Surrender in LA, and it was just a really bad experience. It’s really hard to get into the creative mood and let the spirit move you, per se, when you’re stuck in an hour and a half traffic getting there and an hour and a half home. We never felt like we could quite get into a groove in LA, so we were like, you know what? I like LA but let’s try Nashville. If it doesn’t work out we’ll go back to LA for the next one. And Nashville just turned out to be perfect.
Brendan O’Brien is one of the biggest name producers in the industry, but I know you didn’t choose him just because he’s a big name. What specifically were you looking to get out of working with Brendan?
I think the biggest thing is that because of the caliber of musicians that he’s worked with, we felt like he was the natural next progression as to who we should go with. We felt like, listen, if anybody can take us and challenge us and shape us into the musicians we want to be, you’ve got to go with a producer like that, that’s very hands-on, that’s blunt and honest, and knows what he’s looking for. When we were discussing producers we didn’t even talk about Brendan O’Brien because we felt like he was just absolutely out of our league. He wasn’t even on our top ten because we thought “Yeah, right.” He had just won the Grammy for Producer of the Year, two Grammys, for Producer of the Year and for the AC/DC record. We never thought in a million years.
And then here comes a knock on our bus in Atlanta, Georgia when we were traveling through on tour, and it’s Brendan O’Brien. “Hey, I want to do all the rest of your records from here on out.” And we were like well, that kind of makes the decision for you. You don’t go back to that top ten list.
Brendan loves to pick up an instrument and play on people’s albums when he can. Did you let him do that, or did you keep him away from the guitars?
He was in very minor things such as percussion. There was a very percussion heavy song on this record, he joined in there. And actually he sang some harmony parts with me on two songs. So he definitely had a little hand in there somewhere, but I think our guitarists are pretty exceptional. But even in pre-production, when we were running through the record, he blew our minds because we would all five be in a room, and we’d all be at our instruments. He would listen to the song once and then go to a keyboard, play exactly what we had just shown him for the first time, and go “Okay, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to improve by changing it here, here, here, here, and here.” And we were like oh my gosh, he only heard the song once, and he was at the keyboard translating it and making it better.
Every time I think you’re going in an inspirational direction, you go the other way, like “Feel Good Drag” or when it’s the other way, “Dark Is The Way, Light Is A Place.” It seems like you enjoy twisting the sentiment in the middle of a phrase to where you don’t know whether it’s positive or negative.
Yeah, I do. I don’t know if that’s on purpose of just kind of subconscious. I feel like that title kind of was a summation of every song on that record. It may be dark and heavy in the song, but the lyrics are sobering and heavy, just a feeling of heaviness. But at the end, it’s still a hopeful record. And so when I was reading poetry by Dylan Thomas, I felt like every work of his, every poem, was the same exact way. He would start out and curse God, and I hate God, and I don’t even believe in God, but at the end of the poem he’s just like, and now I’m going to pray to God and say thanks. Or he’d be like this life sucks, it’s over, but I love it. It’s just kind of like, what are you doing? And so it was only fitting that I read through one of his poems called Happy Birthday, as the title suggests, he wrote on his birthday, about how life sucks. But during the midst of it, he gave this hopeful word, like “dark is the way, but light is a place” and it just kind of felt like, woah, that’s the summation of my record as well. It just feels like at moments it’s sobering and heavy, and at other moments it’s just hopeful and melodic.
It feels like there’s that vibe in the lead single. I listen to Impossible, and I’ve heard every word of it, and I still can’t make up my mind whether it’s actually saying this relationship is over, or it’s saying no it’s not over.
Absolutely. And it’s kind of like, I don’t want to say choose your own adventure books, but it’s kind of like one of those things like, what mood are you in, and when you listen to it, that’s what you’re going to get out of it. If you had just got out of a relationship and that person broke your heart, then you’re gonna hear Impossible one way. But if you’re on top of the world, and you’re in the trenches of and in the midst of your relationship with this person and you’re in love, Impossible is going to be such a positive thing. I’m never gonna leave you, I’m in love with you, thanks for sticking it out with me, and that’s the summation of it.
You’ve got a song in the new Tap Tap game. Are there any other iPhone apps that are jumping out at you lately?
What I’ve done is I’ve set up my new iPhone, I’ve got the new iPhone 4, into different boxes as far as utilities and stuff like that. So I’ve got a “tour” folder, and that has Vicinity and Yelp. I think I did a review of Vicinity for you once. But being international, the best one is Skype phone. It’s really handy as far as being able to call back home. There’s also Truphone that works off wifi. And then obviously for the band world, Facebook and the Twitter app are essential to keep in communication with fans. But as far as travel, I’ve been using iTranslate. There’s also a free wifi connection and a converter. Those three have been so handy on this trip, being over in Europe, that I can find the free wifi, I can translate and get around as far as what kind of meal I’m about to order, and then the converter to figure out how bad our dollar is doing compared to every other currency around the world [laughs]. But my favorite app that I am addicted to right now is called Hipstamatic, and it just basically turns my amateur-hour photography, I think I did a review awhile back for you of CameraBag, but this one is even better. It’s kind of like CameraBag 2.0. It’s called Hipstamatic, and it goes through and you can set your film, you can set your camera, and it takes high-res pictures, which unfortunately on CameraBag and the old iPhone, you would try to print out an old iPhone picture and it would just be very grainy and low quality. But with the iPhone 4 and the improvements they’ve done there and the megapixels and this new Hipstamatic, you can come out with very, very professional looking, awesome looking pictures.
Anberlin is playing in Berlin. Do people in Berlin gravitate toward you because of the similar names?
We’ve never played Berlin, so you call me back in two days and I’ll let you know if it is or not. And I still can’t figure out if it’s cheesy to get up there and go “Ich bin ein Berliner,” so I don’t know. I’m sure if I’m gonna say it or not. But I’ll let you know about that too.
Do you have a sense of which song might be the next single, or what the candidates might be?
There’s a few candidates, but I have no idea. Right now it looks like We Owe This To Ourselves might be, or Closer, one of those. If those take off, hopefully we’ll get a few more singles on the radio. But who knows? The music world is so fickle, you could be here today and gone tomorrow.
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