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Long Beach’s Magic Lantern have finally gone and released a new sonic document after what seemed like an eternity of waiting. Eagerly anticipated by those who have been biding their time waiting for the band to get on with their uber limited cassette only and CD-R releases (their Self-Titled CD-R was limited to 30), “High Beams”, the band’s latest opus [...]
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In August, Phoenix, AZ’s The Love Me Nots released their sophomore album Detroit on their own label, Atomic A Go Go Records. Recorded in Detroit, MI with Jim Diamond (White Stripes, The Dirtbombs, Von Bondies, The Willows), Detroit over clears the bar that the band set so high for themselves with their stellar 2007 debut, In Black & White (also recorded by Diamond), of which I have written about numerous times in the past.
In anticipation of The Love Me Nots performance at the Juke Joint in Anaheim on Friday and on Saturday in East Los Angeles with The Seeds for The Vex‘s benefit concert for Self Help Graphics, I asked Nicole (lead singer and Farfisa player) a few questions about working with Diamond and the new album.
IfAN: You guys recorded your new album, Detroit, with Jim Diamond, who also recorded your first album, In Black & White; how did it feel returning to his Ghetto Recorders studio in Detroit, compared to the first time you walked into the former chicken processing factory?
Nicole: It felt kind of like coming home. I don’t want to sound too dramatic, but Jim’s place has such a comfy vibe, no pretentiousness or tension of any kind. It’s always a giant mess with amps and organs and stuff everywhere, and coffee brewing in the kitchen. We just love being there and hanging out with him. He makes you feel like you can do anything. It’s hard to explain. It was about 6 degrees, freezing and snowing and icy the entire time, which was very conducive to tequila-soaked riffs and vocals. I can’t wait to get back there in February and do the next record.
Does it have that feeling of be in a place where nothing’s ever been thrown away, where you never know what you might find if you rummage around there.
Totally. Although he did sell one of his Hammonds while we were there. But basically nothing really changed from the first time we were there. I used his old beautiful grand piano on “Secret Pocket” this time, and obviously his B3 and Leslie on “Work.” Michael fell in love with all of Jim’s dusty old pedals, just like last year. The microphone I sang into was the same old 60′s dictaphone mic that I did the first record on. Truly a rummage sale find, apparently. That’s about as clear a symbol of Jim as anything – he turns that garage-y lo-fi noise into a huge fuzzy crunchy glorious thing.
You recorded In Black & White in 4 days and Detroit in 5, In Black & White has a real raw urgency to it, and Detroit feels, I don’t know, a little more put together. I doubt that one day made a world of difference, and I remember hearing a lot of new material in your sets before you went record. How much more prepared were you guys going into record Detroit?
We were really prepared both times, doing quite a bit of pre-production recordings and test runs on our own before we left Phoenix. When you only have a few days, you have to know exactly what you want to do. There’s really no time to go “Hmm, maybe I should sing that note up a third…” and do ten takes trying to figure it out. But the big difference between the two albums in my opinion is just the fact that band had played so much longer together by then. We knew each other’s moves a lot better, we could anticipate things better. We could test out all the new songs on real crowds while touring and then we had time to drop some of the weaker songs from the album list and write new ones. The extra day in the studio obviously didn’t change the world or anything, but it gave us a little more time to breathe and to get our feet warmed up by Jim’s furnace. My feet were wet frozen ice cubes every time we walked in the door from the street.
I read something about Jim sending your vocals through a Dictaphone, was it one of those really old fashion ones with the tube you speak into and the wax cylinders?
You know honestly Jim is a bit possessive about that mic and I didn’t see much of it’s workings except for the attached cord coming out of the bottom of it and the round red foam windscreen (think Bozo’s nose) that he had duct-taped to the top of it. I literally held it in my hand, laid on the old theatre rug on the floor, and screamed into that thing. I don’t know what makes it work – although you just inspired me to go find out – it’s just the most forgiving little gadget you ever heard. Makes you go for the gravelly high notes, without fear.
On Detroit I feel like the lyrical content has a lot of similarities to those of 60′s girl groups like the Marvelettes, the Vandellas, The Supremes, Shangri-Las and the Ronettes, would you agree?
Michael and I definitely get a lot of inspiration from the old Motown and Stax stuff. We actually sat in the little studio in Motown and listened to an old recording of “Dancing In The Street” before I put down the first records’ vocals that day. We’re huge fans of Sharon Jones and Amy Winehouse and some of the newer soul-inspired artists who are trying new things with the genre lately. Lyrically, I don’t sit down and think, “what would Martha Reeves want to sing here?” – I just try to write love letters, about things that are actually happening to me. I’ve never been one to use a lot of slang or trendy language in regular conversation; so the words you hear are pretty much just the way I would tell it to you standing in the bar over a martini…Heartbreak is pretty universally timeless. We’ve all had more than our fair share of it.
Is “Shuffle” about Michael, does he really dance well?
If you’ve seen this man on stage, you know he can move. The first time I saw him play in The Sonic Thrills years ago, I truly could not take my eyes off him, I was just knocked down by the way he played and looked on stage. It was like he owned the whole room somehow. I’ll let you in on the tiny little hilarious secret about ‘Shuffle’ though…whenever “Cecilia” (Simon & Garfunkel) comes on our ipod playlist, he really cannot help himself from shuffling all over the room. He has perfect rhythm of course, and he gets this serious look on his face, like he is really driven to do it. It’s one of the funnier things I’ve seen in my life. The first time he did it I think I swallowed my coffee wrong and coughed for half an hour. So yeah, the cecila-shuffle and the way he looked when I first saw him on-stage, that was the initial inspiration.
And finally, the vinyl version of Detroit is being released on Kat Jetson’s Project Infinity label on November 4th (preorder), was there any particular reason you choose to have someone else release the vinyl version instead of doing it yourselves through Atomic A Go Go?
Kat’s a really good friend of ours. It’s no secret that the economy is killing everyone in this business in a lot of ways. At our label, we end up giving away a lot of product for promotional purposes and then trying to recoup it on show guarantees. But promoters are being hit by things too. People are broke. Now they have to choose between buying a drink or buying an CD. We are trying more and more to play at venues that have no cover charge; it seems like a better model during these times. So when Kat offered to put out the vinyl, basically with none of the strings attached by the bigger labels that have courted us, we knew she totally understands this band, she understands how we do things and how we like to present our albums to the world. We knew we could work together on this project really easily. For example, I sent her an email saying only “Farfisa-cream-colored vinyl maybe?” and she wote back, simply, “Done.” That’s someone who understands me deeply
The Love Me Nots play the Juke Joint (735 N Anaheim Blvd, Anaheim) on Friday, October 24th with The Hitchhikers, Vicky & The Vengents, The VooDuo and Saturday, October 25th at The Vex (3802 Cesar E. Chavez, Los Angeles) with The Seeds, Green Lady Killers, Deadbeat Sinatra, and Guilty Hearts.