MOKB Interviews Dan Nigro of As Tall As Lions

Awkward hand claps, disorienting tom rhythms, and a throbbing bass beat come crashing together, suddenly, in a sordid display of chaos, but end up fitting neatly, like finely shaped, giant gears turning in their giant notches: so begins the new As Tall As Lions album, You Can’t Take It With You. The driving percussive rhythms that intertwine, delicately, strongly with bass provide a rich, thick undercurrent on which soaring guitars and harmonizing side vocals float. And on top of it all, sometimes coasting, sometimes careening wildly above it all, is a combustible display of lead vocals.

Very similarly to the TV on the Radio album, Dear Science, this album didn’t immediately draw accolades out of my loose-lipped mouth. But, then, there was that moment, somewhere in the middle of The Narrows, it struck me that I had been listening to the disk nonstop. For days. That I knew most of the words (or at least the vocal harmonies enough to mumble along in the car by myself).

You Can’t has very much the feel of an energetic steadiness, a connection between musicians who have been playing with each other, reaching a deep musical understanding of each other’s intentions as their ideas form.

As Tall As Lions are playing right now, as I write this, far away in lovely Sacramento at the Empire Events Centre. I caught up with lead vocalist Dan Nigro after their soundcheck (via Skype Webcam Chat, which failed shortly after), and this is what we talked about:

MOKB : Let’s get right into it. I couldn’t place what attracted me about this album, although I was undoubtedly attracted to it immediately. The ideas and impressions I have had while listening over the last few days are still fairly formless, elusive. One this is for certain, though: I am deeply impressed with the track The Narrows. Tell me a little about that.

Dan Nigro of As Tall As Lions : Sometimes bands write and it just happens, the song comes in one stroke. Sometimes it takes a long time to see the picture. I remember Saen (Fitzgerald) coming into the studio with his demo for the song. Now, when you’re listening to that track, that demo has basically become just the string parts you hear. But even right away, we were all thinking, this is so amazing, we can’t wait to work on it...

Read the rest of the interview AFTER THE JUMP...

We built on the demo, added to it over time, but got scared that what we were doing might wreck the sound of something that sounded so beautiful as it was.

That began in 2006, and now, three years later, we have added to it gradually. Added choruses. Added melodies, added bridge chords, all at separate times. We have definitely spent the most time on this song, on this album.

MOKB : Yes, I particularly love the “Miles Davis, Sketches of Spain” trumpets on this track, the funeral procession feel to it.

ATAL : Yeah, we worked for a long time to get that trumpet sound, using a bunch of different mutes and finally, we were all like, that’s it, we got it.

MOKB : Were you purposefully emulating the Miles Davis sound? Or did the sound just come about, and you ended up just sort of just falling into it.

ATAL : Our trumpet player is obviously very influenced by Miles Davis, but there was a focus on not harping on tones too much, trying to find that perfect tone. Because the more you sit with the tone, the farther away you start to be from the way the song should be. You lose perspective on what sounds good and bad, and end up just focusing on the tone.

MOKB : Is that a lesson you learned from recording your self-titled album in 2007?

ATAL : Definitely. That was a lesson we learned from recording that album. We were so focused on making it perfect, we didn’t want to skip any step. We focused on creating the perfect sound for so long that it began not to sound like us anymore.

MOKB : Tell me a little bit about In Case of Rapture. I keep coming back to that track.

ATAL : In Case Of Rapture was perhaps our poppy-est song on this album.

MOKB : I certainly agree, but I still catch myself singing along to it. The song has a lot of merit.

ATAL : We struggle with the idea of creating a poppy song as artists. Did we over do it? Was it too this or too that? We over-analyze it.

When we wrote this track, we loved it! The moment we wrote it, we felt 100%. It had fire and spark, a sort of “falling off your seat” feel. And we had to struggle to come to terms with the poppy nature of it. We even considered not putting it on the album, but when our label approached us and told us that they were thinking about making it a single, we sort of looked at eachother. It’s a good track, ya know.

MOKB : The production on this album is awesome. How much of the little tweaking sounds were foreseen, a product of foresight? How much just sort of happened?

ATAL : Most of it is pre-meditated. We spent a lot of time, 3-4 months thinking about the album in between writing and recording it. We had a lot of time to think about the production and how the songs were going to sound.

MOKB : Thanks very much for your time tonight, I know you’re about to play. One last question: Were there any “oh sh*t” moments for you, when you thought. This is it, we are actually here. Holy mother.

ATAL : Let me first say that every day I am very, very happy to be here. To be part of a band and to be making music. I am very grateful and reflect on the fact that it is incredible that this is the way that I make money as a human.

I have two moments. The first is when we played Jimmy Kimmel back in ’07. I was like, there is Jimmy Kimmel, in the middle of announcing my band, on national television, to 100 million people.

MOKB : I’ll have to YouTube that, I didn’t catch it. That must have been an incredible moment.

ATAL : Don’t. I sucked! I was so nervous I was trying to hit all the high notes, and I sucked hard. I mean, the band performed well, but I...

The other moment was playing for the Highland Ballroom for a sold-out crowd on tour we were headlining. We were having trouble getting 200, 250 people out for a show,a nd there we were playing in front of a sold-out 700 person venue.

As Tall As Lions is playing their first of many shows in California, then are meandering their way back and forth across the US on a tour with an incredible amount of dates. Their album, You Can’t Take It With You, is a great buy, released August 18^th. Check it out, and check out a short, very cool trailer on their website www.astallaslions.com.

MP3 : As Tall As Lions - Circles (Diplo Remix)
MP3 : As Tall As Lions - Circles

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