As gloriously sloppy as so much of the music in rock history has been known to be, sometimes it just feels good to know that all the explosions of raw, unfiltered passion are tempered by some well-plotted and carefully constructed sound creations. Some bands just want to rock a perfect sound forever – and that is precisely what California Wives was intent on offering with their major label debut, Art History. “This was our first big opportunity to flesh out some of the ideas that we had brewing but didn't have the time or financial ability to do them,” explains California Wives singer/guitarist Jayson Kramer of the circumstances and plan behind the sessions which ultimately yielded Art History. “Because of that, I think we were really excited at first because we had what we thought were a bunch of great ideas, and then we got in touch with our producer who taught us to really focus on the things that are important when you're making a record and to leave the things which aren't important kind of on the side. So, for us, it was a really great learning experience, I think; being our first big record that we did with a producer in a studio, it was really exciting for us.”
That excitement translates perfectly from the moment “Blood Red Youth” eases its way in to open Art History. Right from the top, some listeners will just have a flood of images come rushing at them all at once: John Hughes movie posters, sequences out of Christian Slater movies, scenes from Cure music videos circa 1992, Replacements music videos released between 1985 and 1990 and more. Listeners will be surprised at how vividly and vibrantly those images come rushing at them, and the storm will be so thick that they'll be prompted to wonder where they could have come from. The answer is simple – from the very first note on this record, California Wives have tapped into a timeless quality of teenage heart which seems to vibrate with possibility, but isn't ready to burst quite yet. That possibility combined with Kramer's hopeful whisper is the first, fisherman's gaffe-sized hook of Art History and the appeal it holds is universal; those in their teens will feel like they might have just found something which speaks to how they've started feeling recently but the music they used to love just doesn't reach, and those who have a few years more than that (say, in their thirties?) will be able to enjoy it because it reminds them of the alt-rock that was on the radio when they were in high school. Bridges like that are rare, but that feels like where California Wives are standing here in “Blood Red Youth,” and continue throughout the record as well. Such discussion of his own work excites Kramer greatly, because it reaffirms that the hard work that the band put into the album is apparent to those who listen. “It took us about a month, but that was just recording; when we were in the studio, we worked six days a week from eleven to eleven – twelve hours a day,” says Kramer as he recalls the sessions. “We also pre-produced – wrote the songs – about six months before that, so the making of Art History was about seven months in total. The amount of work that we put in might sound strange when you hear it for the first time, but my advice is to listen to it again [laughing] because this is very much a headphone record; we intentionally buried synths and guitars and harmonies in the mixes of these songs so that, hopefully, listeners would get something a little different out of the record every time they listened to it. In order to do that, we had to put a lot of different tracks on any given song, and we did move pretty quick. Like, we know that our music is going to end up coming out of a lot of laptop speakers, but if someone has a good set of headphones or even a good set of speakers, I encourage people to dig a little deeper and listen to the next layer of the song because there are some interesting things in there, for sure. A lot of that comes from the fact that we are geeks [chuckling] and we like to know about the instruments we play and we really care about song construction and the theory behind what we're doing; it's our love, it's our passion, it's what we love to do and we put a lot of care into the songs – so we really went out of our way to present that faithfully.
When we were in the studio, we had a pretty solid system working while we were making this record,” continues the singer. “It was kind of great because we had a synth room and a guitar room and, so when I was in one room doing guitars and vocals, Dan [California Wives bassist Dan Zima –ed] could be in the other room just tailoring the right synth sounds to suit the song. It worked out really well that way, and I can say with tremendous confidence that every single sound which went into this record was done with care; we looked at every single sound as we went, and absolutely nothing was rushed. I'm really, really proud of that because we got exactly what we wanted to present with this record; every sound is just how we wanted it. That might sound a little overbearing and a little against the grain for how rock works these days, and I understand the aesthetic behind looser playing and I appreciate it. One of my favorite bands is Pavement and they write great songs and Steven Malkmus is a great guitarist – I'd never say he isn't, in his own way – but a lot of our music takes a level of precision. You have to be really precise to play some of the stuff we play, and that's really important to us; I was classically trained and so was our guitarist, and we like that stuff.”
Now that they're on the road supporting the release of Art History, California Wives has seen that all the hard work has really paid off with audiences (“I can say that I've seen a lot of people really enjoying the record; a lot of our fans are really enjoying what we're doing, and that's one of the most important things for us. We've always tried to always make sure we're representing the best possible side of the band with the songs we record, and I think this collection of songs in the best representation of what California Wives is and we're really excited that people are liking it,” beams Kramer), but the band has also discovered several new challenges when it comes to presentation. The wall of sound that his band created for Art History was huge, Kramer concedes, but presenting it live hasn't proven to be impossible. “Just based on the logistics of being a band in this day and age, we're keeping the group as a four-piece and we're sequencing some of the synth tracks,” Kramer explains. “That's how it's working right now, but we're hoping to get a keyboard player to perform with us eventually because the live show is something we take very seriously and, while there's no problem with sequencing tracks, we'd like to get a keyboard player up there with us when we find ourselves in a position to do so, if only so that we're not bound down to the structures we have on the record and we'll be able to stretch the songs out a bit, maybe. So far, people have been really receptive to what we're doing and the way we're doing it, and that feels really good – I'm really excited to take it to as many people as we can now!”
Artist:
www.californiawives.com/
www.californiawives.tumblr.com/
www.myspace.com/californiawives
www.facebook.com/CaliforniaWives
www.twitter.com/californiawives
Download:
California Wives – "Blood Red Youth" – Art History
Further Reading:
Ground Control – Art History – [CD Review]
Album:
Art History is out now. Buy it here on Amazon .
