How did the collaborative film project for The Waiting Room come about?
I was invited to be on the jury of the experimental section at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival. This was long before we were making the record, and I thought there would be a time frame to make an album, as well as collaborate with filmmakers. The album started to exist in sketch form at the end of 2014. At that point the conversation started with festivals, and we began to pair directors with songs we thought would be right for them. The album mixing finished in June [2015], and the films were ready by September. It gradually worked out, but it could have stopped and fallen any step of the way.
Did knowing the songs would be visually interpreted influence how you made The Waiting Room album?
I think the album is part of our line of work. We are not thinking about images when we are writing, arranging, and recording. It's the music that's given to the filmmakers. It's a side project that's been rewarding to be involved in, but I wouldn't want these songs always shackled to these images.
What was your collaboration with Julian Siegel like for the brass arrangements? Was there dialogue that influenced what you and the band played?
The relationship with Julian is a growing relationship. He played bass clarinet on The Something Rain [2012] and put together brass sections for Across Six Leap Years [2013], our retrospective record we made at Abbey Road [Studios]. For The Waiting Room there was a point where we had this song "Help Yourself" and we didn't know where it was taking us. It was so different to songs we'd written in the past. I said to Julian, "Why don't you just do whatever you feel on this song. We can listen to it afterwards and see what happens." He did this great brass arrangement, and that led on to the conversation for "Second Chance Man." That was very much a conversation between myself and him about the album, and the voice that the brass had within it.
Were the songs featuring Jehnny Beth of Savages and Lhasa De Sela written with them in mind?
No, they are very different stories. Jehnny Beth and I were both guest singers at a concert in London for an evening of music from David Lynch films [In Dreams: David Lynch Revisited]. I was working on the song "We Are Dreamers" and was talking to Julian about what the brass arrangement needed in the second half. I heard Jehnny Beth sing live for the first time and it was, "Okay, this is the color and feeling that this song needs." I was fortunate enough to give her the song and she liked it; she understood it, and she gave herself to it. That finished the arrangement for me. For "Hey Lucinda," I had a weekend singing it together with Lhasa, who was a great friend of mine. After that she became ill and we lost her, and I had to put the song away for a long time. When I went back to it I heard it in a very different way. It was very much a moment in time.
Two views of Le Chien Chanceux. For perspective, note the wood burning stove in both photos and Stuart at the console (photo above).
"Hey Lucinda" is a standout song to me. The conversation between the characters really comes across. Were the vocals cut simultaneously live?
We had an evening in the studio in Montreal, and we sang it together. When I wrote "Hey Lucinda" it was exciting, because it broke down structural barriers that I'd felt in duets before. In the past I felt as though I was fitting the conversation into a song format, whereas with "Hey Lucinda" I found a way for the song to follow the conversation. It was a breakthrough moment; but I struggled with how to arrange it, and how to approach the recording of it. I was thinking about it in too linear of a fashion. When I went back to it, I was able to just connect with that moment of myself and Lhasa singing to each other. I was able then to go, "Oh, it just needed some glockenspiel notes around this bit. It needs tension here." It was a real step forward in the way of viewing a song.
You began self-recording early on in Tindersticks. Was this a creative decision?
I think when you're a young band, or a young band at that time… We spent maybe ten years between [the ages of] 16 and 26 going to make demos to please record companies, and going into studios where the engineer would be tuned into the production techniques and sounds of the time, which was quite dangerous in the late '80s! We got to a point, when we moved to London, that we just needed to turn our back on record companies, studios, and the perceived wisdom of how records should sound at that time. We started to buy recording equipment and made our first single, "Patchwork," in our kitchen. Probably all of the best-sounding things I've ever made were done on a no-brand mixing desk that we picked up in a second-hand paper. I think it's gone on from there. We demoed the whole of our first album in this kitchen, so by the time we were able to step into a proper studio we knew what we were looking for. [The debut was recorded at Townhouse 3, formerly The Who's Ramport Studios.] We had Ian Caple [engineer and co-producer] to help us and it was a really great mix at that moment. He was trained at EMI a long time ago, and I learned so much about engineering from Ian on the records we made with him. It was a positive thing to step into our own world, and not try and be in this music business kind of world.
Your studio, Le Chien Chanceux, means "Lucky Dog" in English?
Yes. Around 1996 I was able to have a small studio in London, on the side of my house in a converted garage. I had our dutiful MCI JH-400 [console] in there. We acted as an overdub/mixing studio; I could work one-on-one with people. In 2005 I recorded my second solo album [Leaving Songs] in Nashville with Mark Nevers [Tape Op #21] and brought it back to the studio. As I finished these recordings, I realized I needed to be in an ambient space where people could come together, play, and capture an idea at a very early stage. A natural kind of progression happened. We needed more space for our family, for my studio, and for my wife's studio. My wife is a painter, and she was painting bigger paintings! We found this property in the middle of France when we were driving through one summer. It's a big house for our kids, and behind it was this big shell of a barn with a hayloft on one side. I found this old ladder. I went up, fought through the cobwebs and thought, "Okay, this is where my studio needs to be." It's been evolving ever since. It's our meeting place, it's our studio, and we can rehearse there. What's great about making albums there is we can find our sounds and leave the drums, bass, and guitar setups intact. We can go back months later when we have time to be together [the band members reside in different cities] and we're in the same sonic space. We can go for the moments of spontaneity; the excitement of being together.
Is Le Chien Chanceux an analog, digital, or hybrid studio?
It's hybrid. I spend so much time on my own that I have to use Pro Tools for the accessibility of the ideas. I think the ideas have to come first, and I'm not enough of a technician to be dealing with a tape recorder. But I use digital recording as an "editable tape recorder." What I love about digital recording is keeping spontaneous moments together. We used to have to think so much about structures of songs. Digital recording takes away that pressure, so you can enjoy playing music in a room together. We have an MCI JH-500 desk, an Ecoplate [plate reverb], and an AKG spring reverb. With the colors all of this equipment brings, I have a balance of being able to work on my own and the feeling of authenticity with the sounds we create.
