I had the great pleasure of producing The Water’s debut album Scandals and Animals this past spring. The Water are better known to us as Dan and James. Dan plays all the drums, loops and guitar and James plays the guitars and synths.

This record was a long time coming. These guys have grown tremendously since the first time I saw them at The Metro Gallery 3 years ago. In making Scandals and Animals, we used quite a bit of gorgeous vintage The Water, but a lot of new territory was charted as well. This isn’t simply a regurgitation of their live show in a studio. There was discussion of using an acoustic guitar on the record. There’s a pretty Beach Boy bass on a few tracks. It’s epic, dynamic, full of lyricless emotion and all while layering on piles of loops and beautiful melodies and polyrhythms crescendoing to an enormous dénouement .

The Water’s music speaks for itself. It’s not a record you can listen to in pieces. It’s a full-length record in its purest sense. Sit back, relax and listen from start to finish without interruption.

You can preorder the record here from Baltimore’s own Scenic Route Records and you can listen to my favorite tracks below:

Handsome Homeless

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DeSelby

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Future Nails

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A Cat Called Cricket came by last week for their microshow. It was a cold and damp night. A perfect autumn night for a band complete with strings, harmonies and casios. A Cat Called Cricket was joined by Dan Cohan on percussion from The Water/The Manly Deeds and Ruby Fulton & Andrew Histand on violin and cello respectively from We Used To Be Family.

Technical info: Kick: Beta 52, Snare: 57, Drum Overhead: SM81, Bass/Electric Guitar: 421/DI, Ruby (Violin): Otkava 012, Patty (Cello): U87, Andrew (Cello): C3, Alex Vox: SM7, Alex Acoustic: Apex460, Amy Vox: 441, Room: AT PZM.

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The Manly Deeds came in a week or so ago for their microshow. It was a seriously fun hootenanny! Complete with banjo, acoustic guitar, mandolin, upright bass and three-part harmonies.

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I’ve been working with The Water for a few months now. Why they haven’t been scooped up by a record label is beyond me. They are evocative and angular. Beyond their amazingly intense and shoegazey music, they are incredibly nice guys. Dan is sort of the ringleader, but James is the less vocal mad scientist.

Dan has a suitcase cut in half mounted on his kick drum (where the tom would go) filled with effect pedals that would make The Edge drool. It’s his command center. There is also a speaker “egg” Dan built that is the size of a large child with speakers custom built that give him a monitor mix of what all the pedals/loops are doing. It’s piercingly loud, but it’s also part of the sound and we captured it here in these recordings.

James has an equal amount of electronics and cables mounted in front of where his guitar cab goes. Quite possibly the loudest band I’ve ever worked with, and most definitely the most emotional. And not cry-baby emo. Emotional in all the best of ways.

These songs were primarily recorded live in the studio to capture their fierce synergy. Cutting everything up and tracking separately would have drastically changed their momentum and emotional capabilities. Very little is in fact “fixed” – basically what you hear is what you get aside from a few keyboard overdubs.

Here are two of my favorite songs:

Mercury Switch

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Mr. Fritz/Fantasia

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