Page 40 - FLIPMAG.NET

“IT’S CHAOS. SOMETIMES WE’LL TRACK A
WHOLE SONG, THEN RETRACK IT SIX MONTHS
LATER BECAUSE, THE FIRST TIME AROUND, WE
WERE BASICALLY WRITING IT. LATER, WE DELETE
EVERYTHING AND START FROM SCRATCH”
“He’s like a secret weapon,” she says. “Harry and
I have been friends since we were 19. He started
playing guitar with me and we tried to make terrible
music together until we met Tony. Since then, Harry
has turned into the most important throughline of
my records – the guitar on both sounds like him.
“It’s funny. He used to be a shreddy NAMM guy,”
she adds, laughing. “But now he’s one of the only
people I feel comfortable leaving alone in the studio
because I trust him. He’ll play 15 things and then the
16th thing will be the hook of the song – and then
you’ll have to go back and retrack everything.
“When I’m doing a solo thing and when I’m doing
Better Oblivion, I just miss Harry’s playing so much,
because it’s just a style. It’s different to someone who
learns parts – which is amazing as well, and I value
that on almost every other instrument – but his guitar
playing has been something that I have leaned on for
my whole career.”
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This gives us the impression that a Phoebe Bridgers
recording session is far from a ‘get in, play the parts
and get out’ scenario, and something altogether more
experimental and free.
“Recording is like writing to me,” she says. “For the
most part, if I’m not sure what direction I want to
take something, my method is: track everything and
decide later. It’s chaos. It takes forever. Sometimes
we’ll track a whole song and then retrack it six months
later because, the first time around, we were basically
writing it and deciding what parts we liked. Later,
we delete everything and start from scratch.”
As workflows go, it’s not what you’d call efficient,
but it’s led to some spectacular results – and in the
case of one of the album’s guest performers, results
that surprised even Bridgers.
“Blake Mills plays clarinet on Savior Complex,”
she says. “Blake was like, ‘Hey, I play clarinet,’ and I
was like, ‘Please, don’t...’ But he did it – and it’s the
best! I also love his guitar playing on Halloween, and
he was also going to come in and play some random
percussion on some stuff and ended up playing drums
on Halloween too. They’re some of my favourite drums
on the record, and I was pretty set on not having
drums on that song. I love moments like that.”