Song Exploder - The Thermals - No Culture Icons

Episode Date: September 18, 2014

The Thermals originally began as Hutch Harris's solo recording project. He sang and played all the instruments on the 2003 Thermals record More Parts Per Million. In this episode, Hutch breaks down his lo-fi recording of the song No Culture Icons. The track was later mixed by Chris Walla, who's known best for his work with Death Cab for Cutie, and we’ll hear some thoughts from him as well. I spoke with Hutch in front of a live audience at the XOXO Festival in Portland, Oregon.

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe. This episode contains explicit language. The band The Thermals originally began as Hutch Harris's solo recording project. He sang and played all the instruments on the 2003 Thermals record More Parts Per Million. In this episode, Hutch breaks down his lo-fi recording of the song No Culture Icons. The track was later mixed by Chris Walla, who's best known for his work with Death Cab for Cutie, and we'll hear some thoughts from him as well. I spoke with Hutch in front of a live audience at the XOXO

XO Festival in Portland, Oregon. This just started as a recording project that I was just doing by myself on a four track, just recorded at my old house. So this was like the start of the whole band, like there was nothing, and then I recorded a bunch of songs on a four track, and that became the band. Maybe when I was 17 or 18, I got a four track, and a lot of friends, I, you know, this is before Pro Tools, so everyone I knew was recording songs on a, on set because it's cheap mainly and then it's easy you know it's cheap and easy to use a cassette cost a dollar so I think I could fit like three or four songs on a cassette so really the record costs about like twelve dollars to make so if you can accept

that the recordings are really low-fi you know to me it's like if you have a really good song especially a good like punk song or a simple song you don't need a really expensive recording and this is just something I had done a lot just recording songs very quickly, you know, without a lot of thought and planning and not knowing what was going to happen. It was just like the project I was doing. The liner notes for the first elevator to hell record, he says that each song was just written and recorded in one day. Lots of songs that he wanted to share.

High up above him in a tall, cloudy air. Flew a little bird in some others noticed there. I loved the music that he made, and I thought that was a really good way to approach a project. That's a really good way to work. You write something, you record it, and then you're just done with it. At the end of the day, you don't overthink it. You don't overwork the song. What I would do is, you know, come home from work, figure out something on guitar.

I would do a click track and then put the guitar and then fill out all the other instruments, and then go sit and just sit on the porch and write lyrics. And then, you know, at the end of the day, you have a song finished. which it's a really satisfying and gratifying way to work, as long as you can deal with. You know, it's very lo-fi, obviously. So you kind of go for the stream of consciousness lyrically. You don't, the point is just to not think too much.

But, you know, in making anything, you can just overthink it to the point where you lost the excitement of the original idea. It's weird because I never got back to the same place. Now I, like, stress for years over, you know, lyrics and try to make everything perfect. And sometimes it works a lot better, but a lot of times, you know, people relate to things that you're, you know, for me, sometimes I'm not even, like some of these lyrics, I could tell you what it means. A lot of them are just like, it came so fast. I really don't know. But people, that didn't stop people from liking it. Hardly art, hardly starving. Hardly art, hardly started.

More color liquid, no set, no skin. More stained paper, more parts per million. To me, more parts per million just meant it's whatever we're working with is going to be totally saturated. And I, yeah, I really like that idea. Eventually what represented the thermals the best was that kind of like everything is falling apart and everything is kind of, it's just madness, but it's more of like a celebration of it as opposed to letting it get you down. So I had one microphone, one preamp, and the four track.

So the same mic and pre is used for the vocals, drums, and guitar. You know, there's just one mic in a room. It's not fancy. You know, it's just kind of nice and gritty. And just on the preamp, everything is just cranked, like, all the way up. It was more that I was modeling the guitars off other bands, like, specifically, like 80s punk bands, like misfits. It's so funny because Danzig is so tough and the Misfits are kind of a tough band.

But when you actually get down, I mean, a lot of their songs listen to the chords they're playing. You know, it's just mostly these kind of sweet major chords that are, you know, it's not tough at all. Except they have distortion, man. Yeah, yeah, it's a lot of distortion. And he's going to eat your skull or whatever. My name is my most salient memory from mixing that record was the fact that on Hutch's four track, you can adjust the pitch on the far track, right? There's this little knob that's like bafferick flower.

And then all these pieces of masking tape around the knob, and each of them had a line on it. Like a piece of paper, it is back, all the titles of all the songs on the record. And then each of the song titles corresponded to one of the lines on one of those pieces of masking tape. And I remember getting into a couple of songs, and something is weird. I've just never seen anything quite like it before. It was kind of amazing. So a lot of times when I was tracking, you know, I'd make the song and then,

or when I was getting ready to sing it, I would just want the song to be a little faster, so you just pitch it up. To me, the fact that I had recorded all the instruments myself, there's kind of no honesty left after that because this is not something real. This is not an actual real band at this point that could go perform these songs,

you know, so it's all, and it's not magic, It's just, this just doesn't, it's cool that way. And that's what I liked about the elevator to hell recordings. This is something that doesn't actually exist. It only exists once this one person has, like, layered all these tracks together. It sounds like Pebbles and Bam Bam to me. It's like if you had cavemen kids making a song. But I love that.

Like, for me, when I started these recordings, I was like, how simple can something really be, like, simple to the point where it's kind of dumb? actually. Just the drummer going, ugh, ugh, uh, uh, uh, uh. Like, drumming is so dumb already, but you can always make it a little dumber, you know? And it's so funny, like, we've had a lot of people play drums with us, and like these songs that I made, you know, a new drummer comes in and they have to learn older songs that you've made. This one, and there's a couple others on this record, have been really difficult for people to learn to play drums the correct way. They'll have like a hard time playing, like, can you play it like my stupid way?

way. Like, they're not a, it's a little, it's hard for them. Mixing probably took two or three days. We went up to Seattle. For Chris Walla, you know, who's, you know, he's in Death Cap for QDee. He's recorded and mixed almost all of their records. He's done a ton, you know, he's done Tegan and Sarah records. Like, he's used to doing stuff like, you know, very well. He does, he's, he's good, he's good at recording. We met, like, the owner and a couple of the higher-ups at Sub-pop for dinner, and they were like, how's the mixing coming? And he was, like, something like, oh, we got five songs done, and they were, like, so shocked. And he said, well, it's on a four track.

You can only do so much, you know. So, yeah, it's going to be quick. The only direct, I think I approached it with make sure you can understand the words sort of tattooed on my forehead. In any recording, there needs to be something that you focus on. What people relate to when you're listening to a song is usually the vocals. It's usually the vocals and then the drums. The vocals, it's something like, if you can't play any,

instrument you can still sing even if you can't sing well I mean if you're just like listening to a pop song so the vocals need to if you can't hear the vocals to sing along then you're kind of like what do you you know what are you gonna grab on to with the song no new deafness no self-reference no getting psyched on no culture icons no ideal no what I feel though to the same note to with the same name no one ideal no what I feel Oh, oh, oh. This whole record, especially this song for me,

all like the no new deafness, no self-reference. You know, my dad is a musician and he's a songwriter, and he had always like helped me like create rules, like just your own personal rules. I feel like everyone has this when you're creating anything. You just have things that you want to do and things that you won't do in making anything. And then for me, you know, I'd already been in bands

for like 10 years or something when I made this. And so for me, this was about throwing away. like all these rules that I had made for myself. And then just no culture icons was just about any kind of like worship I had for anyone else's art I was going to throw away. And now here's no culture icons by the thermals in its entirety. Hardly, I, hardly starving,

hardly garbage, more color liquid, no... Information on the thermals, including a link to buy this song, visit songexploder.net. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishikesh, her way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists,

and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Rope. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzukas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more.

They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishycage.com. Or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. You can find all the past and future episodes of Song Exploder at SongExploder.net or on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you download podcasts. Find the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at Song Exploder.

Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of extraordinary, story-driven shows. Learn more at Radiotopia.fm. My name is Rishi Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening.