catalogue

HERE WE GO MAGIC

A DIFFERENT SHIP (SECRETLY CANADIAN)

HERE WE GO MAGIC - A DIFFERENT SHIP 54113
format:
1 LP
release:
18.05.2012
label:
SECRETLY CANADIAN
item ID:
54113
barcode:
0656605023014
LPs come with a coupon to download the record. Produced by Nigel Godrich (Radiohead, Beck) and recorded at his studio in London.

HERE WE GO MAGIC's sophomore album, "Pigeons", had only been out a few weeks when the seeds for "A Different Ship" were planted in late June 2010 at the Glastonbury Festival.

The New York band had been on the road since spring, wowing audiences with their uncanny live chemistry, turning album tracks into intricately groovy sonic explorations where the band seemed almost synchronously possessed.

That had been their sweet spot since their earliest rehearsals together, when singer/songwriter Luke Temple, bassist Jennifer Turner, guitarist Michael Bloch, drummer Peter Hale and then-keyboardist Kristina Lieberson bonded over a shared belief in musical spontaneity and a kind of improvisation that feels too divinely ordered to be called "jamming." At Glastonbury "the crowd wasn't giving us much to work with, except for these two guys standing in front," Temple continues.

"One of them was dancing around like a maniac and I was like, 'I'm just gonna play for those two guys'.

Then I realized, 'that's fucking ThomYorke and Nigel Godrich!'" The band, York & Godrich became fast friends and the producer eventually proposed working together.

In particular, the producer said he thought he could help them better communicate their hypnotic and hypnagogic live vibe on tape.

And he did. "A Different Ship" is HERE WE GO MAGIC's most remarkable and captivating album yet, with an emotional and musical arc that is alternately calming and anxiety-inducing, and often both at once.

"I Believe In Action" and "Make Up Your Mind" sound like they're being beamed in from outer space, while more earthbound tracks such as "Miracle of Mary," "Over The Ocean" and "Alone But Moving" amble in a omnolent haze, with Temple's cool timbre cutting through the fog.

After demoing and tracking in both LA with Godrich and later upstate New York, the band ultimately ended up recording the bulk of the album in Godrich's London studio By that time the band was bursting with new ideas and the songs just started flowing."I think the best stuff on the record is the stuff that was thought about the least," says Temple.

"Tracks like "Over The Ocean, "I Believe In Action", "Made To Be Old" - written in the morning and recorded the same afternoon." In London, with an array of huge sounds at their disposal, they found it easier to stick to their "keep it simple(r)" rule.

"When Jen produced "Pigeons", the sounds were a lot more condensed and we got really into finding the infinite space inside something that's super on top of itself," explains Bloch.

"Then suddenly when you're working in a studio like Nigel's, it's all these enormous sounds.

Just one of Jen's bass notes fills up the room." Despite an incubation period of nearly a year, and a writing process that spanned two continents, the ten songs of "A Different Ship" carry a consistent thematic concern-what the band describes as an "unresolved tension between valuing being alone and valuing being connected." Says Temple: "The music is beautiful, but feels like it's brittle and about to crack.

It's always suspended in between major and minor, happy and sad, trying to find that middle ambiguous place.

A lot of the endings of these songs just kind of stop, like things are left suspended, floating in space.

That's a real characteristic of us as a band-moving forward, even when we're sort of unsure, and knowing we'll find happy accidents along the way."
 
  • Tracklisting
  • 1.1. INTRO
  • 1.2. HARD TO BE CLOSE
  • 1.3. MAKE UP YOUR MIND
  • 1.4. ALONE BUT MOVING
  • 1.5. I BELIEVE IN ACTION
  • 1.6. OVER THE OCEAN
  • 1.7. MADE TO BE OLD
  • 1.8. HOW DO I KNOW
  • 1.9. MIRACLE OF MARY
  • 1.10. A DIFFERENT SHIP