The Swayback Raises the Bar

They say the devil's greatest trick was trying to convince the world that he doesn't exist. A decent ruse, but as the Swayback just proved, the devil truly is in the details. Although the act's latest, Long Gone Lads, has a loose, almost tossed-off, insouciance, its creators actually toiled endlessly over the tracks on DJ editing software, building and deconstructing them to the point of distraction before finally entering the studio with lauded producer Andrew Vastola for the sessions that produced Lads.

"Our only goal was to make something that preceded us," says Eric Halborg, the Swayback's frontman. "That was it. That was the only goal."

Mission accomplished. Lads is absolutely stunning from start to finish, both from a songwriting and production standpoint. Not only is this the Swayback's strongest material, but it's the band's best-sounding effort to date, and that's thanks in part to the members' meticulous preparation. From investing what amounted to six months in pre-production with venerable knob-turner Bob Ferbrache, to learning to record themselves at home, to rehearsing with a click-track the band spent close to eighteen months just getting ready to record the album, writing and rewriting parts, constantly practicing, tweaking and experimenting. In fact, several of Lad's tracks appear in their ninth iteration.

"With some songs," explains guitarist William Murphy, "there's infinite versions that we didn't even finish editing. I would do too many guitar tracks or Eric would do too many vocals, and we'd just kind of pick the few good ones and shape them up."

Once those tracks took shape, the players presented their sketches to Vastola, who indulged their ideas no matter how far-fetched they seemed. Although the Swayback has recorded at close to half a dozen of the area's finest studios with some of the best engineers, this was the first time the band's members really felt like they were given room to experiment, particularly on songs such as the fantastic "Queen's Dance," an ode to Salome, the daughter of Herodias, who requested John the Baptist's head on a platter. The ominous yet alluring track conjures up a subterranean disco housed inside a Middle Eastern opium den, in which Halborg's come-hither vocals straddle a seductive dance loop that he and Murphy constructed, and Vastola wisely chose to keep.

"Andrew was really good," says Murphy. "He indulged all of our ideas, even if they were bad. He would plug them in and then we'd realize — yeah, that was a really bad idea. Andrew let me do weird things; he let me run two amps. One was just doing something so odd, I didn't even want to listen to it, and then there was a normal one, and he recorded it all."

"But we knew where we wanted the weirdness, which was a huge part of it," adds Halborg. "We had recorded the weirdness a bunch of times ourselves and then brought it to Andrew, and he juiced it up."

"I think it was hard to convey our message," Murphy continues, referring to past sessions. "And this time, since we realized how to record ourselves, we could bring it in and show them, rather than explain to them with weird sounds or rough sketches of things. Like the vibe parts: If I were like, 'Hey, Andrew, this song's really heavy; I want to put some vibraphones on it,' it could be like, 'Whatever. You're fucking crazy. You're going to waste my time.' But then you'd have the opportunity to bring stuff in, and you can kind of look at it in an objective forum and see how it fits."

"With these other cats," Halborg chimes in, "with most of them, they'd be like, 'Hey, you guys are really good.' But it was cold; they'd never heard us, they'd never seen us live. We'd walk into their studios and set up these huge amps and blast them. So not only did he know us, but we knew what we were thinking for the first time, full-on."

While that's partly what attracted them to Vastola, they were also keen on what he'd done with their friends' records and were eager to see what he could add to their sound. Plenty, it turned out. While the disc was tracked live at Rocky Mountain Recorders, Vastola worked closely with the band, adding subtle flourishes on the back end, such as the layered vocal harmonies that enhance Halborg's already penetrating melodies. And while Halborg's sweaty bass lines and drummer Martijn Bolster's taut timekeeping are prominently featured in the mix, Vastola also left ample space for the unsettling backdrops created by Murphy's textured guitar lines.