The Lawsuits released their first full-length album today, October 1st, entitled Cool Cool Cool. When a band’s album drops, a lot of us have this thought of wondering what it would be like to be there in the studio with the band as record their music and make difficult decisions pertaining to the making of it. Lucky for you, and us, Brendan Cunningham, bass player of The Lawsuits, has unmasked all of that wonder and allowed us to peek into the adventure behind the making of Cool Cool Cool. Check out what he had to say below, and don’t forget to pick up their debut full-length album tomorrow!
When we walked into the studio on the first day of tracking our full-length there was not really a definitive game plan. None of us really knew what we were getting into, as we had never worked in a proper studio before. Having recorded all our music to date ourselves in basements and on borrowed time, we had not yet figured out what our dynamic with producer would be, or for that matter what his role would be.
Thankfully, this apprehension did not last long. Bill Moriarty was there to guide us through the album making process. Bill created a creative and low pressure work environment. We never felt the clock ticking down on us, making us feel pressure to settle on something because we were running out of time. Because of this we were able to attack songs in many different ways. We started off live tracking because thats what we had done in the past, but it was soon evident that our old methods were not going to produce the product we wanted.
We started some songs at Brian’s home studio, we rearranged songs, we changed the feel of some, we changed the genre of others, at times we built right off of demos (because sometimes you can’t recreate the magic of that first take), and most importantly we wrote in the studio. “25w A19 120v Blues” would not exist without the Herba Mate induced fever of a 12 hour day in the studio. Come to think of it, we probably owe Bill a case or two of Mate after all we drank while recording.
It was a long process. A few songs that we walked in saying, “this one is definitely on the album” or “this could be the first single” fell by the wayside to other more interesting songs. Then, once we had our songs, there were heated debates about the album order. It’s funny how someone can feel so strongly that THIS SONG needs to be the SECOND SONG. After listening to the songs in every order combination imaginable, we all agreed on what is now the track listing.
It was somewhat melancholy when it was all over and the tracks were sent to be mastered and we collected our gear from the studio. But we walked away with the best music we’ve ever made and we have Bill (and engineer Joe Bisirri) to thank.
