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The Nova Saints - Call the Shots...
We caught up with The Nova Saints to discuss the album track by track & ended up having a much longer conversation than planned.
So we've split it into 2 parts - first up in part one, we talk about Newfoundland, the writing & recording. In Part two, we break it down track by track...
'Newfoundland' features 12 songs written over the course of the band's first 3 years together and is a mixture of brand new recordings of previously unheard songs and re-recordings of Nova Saints 'classics', all recorded between 2009 and 2011 by Mat Sampson at Bink Bonk, Bristol.
Congratulations on the new album, now I know why Scott from Northern Star has been so excited about it's release.
At what point did you feel you’d started recording the new album - did you know at the time or did it only appear so looking back?
Steve Waterhouse (vocal, guitar): There was a definite plan to go in and ‘record the album’.
John Banks (bass, vocals): Yeah, there was a very conscious and deliberate starting point. By the end of 2008 we found ourselves manager-less and directionless and it was probably the closest the band has come to calling it a day. We’d all moved out of the house we shared together in Bristol and I guess real life kind of took over and the band was no longer everyone’s primary focus. But Scott was a massive fan of the band so when he heard that we’d lost our manager he called me up, concerned that we were going to spilt up. He‘d basically made it his mission to keep the band together and told me that if we recorded an album he’d put it out. That was the kick up the arse we needed, really.
Had you decided on the tracks before you embarked or was it more along the lines of recording what you could then deciding…
John: Because of budget and time constraints we planned the recording of the album really meticulously. We didn’t have the luxury of being able to record hours of music and then compile an album out of it, we simply couldn’t afford to. We knew exactly which tracks we would record – we even knew which day we would record each track on. Not a single note of music was recorded that didn’t end up on the finished album.
Steve: We were also lucky in that everything we tried worked (eventually!) so there was no need to go and record more or whatever. How complete an idea was Newfoundland or has it evolved through the recording process to the finished article that's now ready for release? John: To be honest, everything down to the track order had been decided on before we even recorded a note of music. We knew these songs so well we knew exactly how they would hang together as an album, we rehearsed them playing the album as a whole – that way we were able to record segues and instrumental passages of music to link the tracks because we knew exactly how the finished record would be presented. That said, there was still plenty of scope for experimentation - days where we would just record pedals for an hour with no guitar plugged into it just to see what it sounded like: shit. Ha! We were still cosmic crusaders on the eternal quest for the mythical ‘lost chord’, man... And the one thing we didn’t know in advance was what the album would sound like. We know what we wanted it to sound like but we were working with a producer we’d never met before, using techniques we’d never used before and even playing instruments we’d never played before. We basically banned Mat, our producer, from listening to anything that we had recorded previously and told him how we wanted the album to sound using a mixture of our own very limited musical vocabulary and a bunch of obscure adjectives. “We want this track to sound kind of fizzy but also crunchy”, “the guitar should sound like the amp’s broken”– all kinds of nonsense. But he absolutely nailed what we were after. Wow - planned to perfection then! 3 years in the making? Steve: Yep. The geography, finances and other careers of the band have had a little to do with that but… John: 3 years is very misleading though, because if you add up the actual time in the studio over those 3 years it only comes to about a month – and that was working 10 till 6, Monday to Friday. Mat’s kind of like one of those EMI boffins from the ‘60s. He kept strict working hours and he was right to – I don’t think I’ve ever done anything productive in a studio after about 9 o’clock at night. When you’ve been recording all day you get to a point when your brain becomes so addled that you just start going backwards. Steve: Getting the five of us to agree on anything is difficult, so to get us to agree with the recording and mixing of 12 songs is quite an exercise in itself. John: I think perfection is the wrong word, we were just very meticulous. It felt like we were crafting the album, shaping the tracks with great attention to detail, making decisions and self editing as we went. These are all songs that have been around for a while but were arranged to be played live at an enormous volume. In order to make them work on record we basically deconstructed every track, took them apart, looked at the arrangements and then put them back together leaving out anything that we felt didn’t work, was gratuitous or unnecessary or that didn’t serve the track. Steve: The fact we did and do agree with every decision throughout is a testament to how good the record sounds. I’m proud of it, we all are. I don't suppose there's a better outcome - finishing an album & feeling proud of what you've done. Have any of the tracks undergone what feel like dramatic changes over this time? Steve: Most of them! John: Probably more to other people than to us though, because we’ve watched the songs evolve slowly. The songs are essentially the same, we’ve just refined them and recorded them better. There is a vastly different version of “Ten Year Silence” knocking about somewhere though. Steve: We tried everything to get that one sound sounding like it ‘should’. We got there in the end. John: That said, the version that we ended up with is probably the closest to the original demo of all of them. The biggest change has been in us as people, though. We’re more discerning than we ever were and we have a clearer idea of what we want to sound like. These are the best recordings we’ve ever done by a country mile. Newest track? Oldest track? John: The oldest track is Sugar Coated. That dates from early 2005. I kind of consider that the first Nova Saints song although it was neither the first song we wrote nor were we called The Nova Saints when we wrote it! I guess it was the song where we discovered what sort of band we were going to be. There was no question of it not being the first song on the album.
Steve: Newest is probably ‘I Wouldn’t’? John: It’s either “I Wouldn’t” or “Ten Year Silence” which are both from around late 2007. The album almost ended up being sequenced chronologically although that was completely unintentional. How many tracks are new to your fans? Steve: About half the album has never been released or recorded before. John: Of the 12 tracks 7 are completely new and never before released. The remaining 5 tracks are all brand new re-recordings so essentially new to the fans too. There was no question that those 5 tracks had to be on our debut album but there were various reasons why we felt we needed to re-record them. Firstly I personally was never happy with those original recordings. Secondly, whatever you think of those recordings, there was no way that they would have worked within the context of an album. Are there any that you are yet to play live? Steve: Nope…tried ‘em all. John: These are the songs that have essentially made up our live set for the past 6 years. Live appearances have been almost sporadic – is this related to making the album or was it a specific choice? Steve: The same reasons the album’s taken so long really…that and the album recording process itself…it’s taken priority over everything else. John: We romanticise it by telling people that we’ve “done a Beatles” and become a studio band. But we haven’t. It’s all lies... Describe the writing/recording process… Does someone bring completed tracks? Do they come from jams/rehearsals? How was recording? By the sounds of it, you pretty much had it planned so it must be first or second-take with it all? Steve: There are little song writing pairs in the band, there are songs written by people pretty much on their own and there are definitely the results of one or two jams on there. John: The drums and bass for every track were recorded together in two days. We then split the remaining 3 years between Dom layering guitar parts and the rest of us deleting all the superfluous ones.... Steve: The majority of my stuff was first-take since you ask, yeah. John: Most of it was first-take, to be fair to everyone. Of course Steve is a consummate professional but none of us got too precious about our parts. We knew the songs back to front before we went in so we were keen to keep the energy of the first take as much as possible. There’s probably a few mistakes in there if you go through it with a fine tooth comb but we didn’t want to lose that immediacy, which is always a risk when you take 3 years to record an album! Besides, some of my favourite moments in music are mistakes – the cowbell on “Honky Tonk Woman”, Ringo forgetting the drum pattern halfway through “Ticket To Ride”. I don’t care what anyone says, I’m sure he didn’t mean to do that! How was the mixing & what did it feel like finally saying "Done" on a track? John: Because it had taken three years to finish the recording of the album we were determined not to get bogged down in the mixes. Like I said, we wanted to keep the immediacy, so we limited ourselves to one day of mixing per track. Whatever we had by the end of that day – that was the finished track. It was quite torturous having to leave tracks when you felt that maybe it still wasn’t quite right but the alternative is slaving over it until it’s absolutely ‘perfect’ whilst in the meantime you’ve squeezed every ounce of life and spontaneity out of it. Besides, perfection doesn’t exist so you’d drive yourself mad searching for it. At least, at the end of the day, we were able to say “cool, it’s finished, it is what it is.” And move onto the next one. Listening to The Nova Saints, I’d say there’s differing influences on different tracks. By that I mean the influences of different members of the band coming to the fore. Does this relate to different writers within the band? John: Yeah, you’re totally right. There’s 5 song writers in this band so there’s a lot of individual influences being brought to the table. Steve: Matt’s got his Motown and soul background, Tom listens to a lot more folk music these days, Dom will forever be listening to music with as many guitars as is possible on it and John’s record collection is pretty hard to define; he’s got a bit of everything in there. It doesn’t really matter what I’m listening to at the time, whatever I write tends to come out sounding like a pop song. John: I think ‘pop’ is our one unifying influence. Our music tastes have become much more diverse since we stopped sharing a house together but the one thing that will guarantee us all to hit the dance floor in unison would be if the DJ drops “Call The Shots” by Girls Aloud. I’m not even joking." As we have a little break, Steve disappears having failed to be convinced that they should record Call The Shots as a B side, John stays & we're joined by Dom for part 2 where we get down to the specifics of each track... Newfoundland is to be released through Northern Star Records on 31st October. The Nova Saints on Facebook... (http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Nova-Saints/7485767441) The Nova Saints on Myspace... (http://www.myspace.com/novasaints) Northern-Star Records... (http://www.northernstarrecords.com/) 
Tags: the nova saints newfoundland steve waterhouse dom gallagher john banks matt goddard tom chillcott i wouldn't northern-star records 2011
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