Bass Drum of Death Tells Us Why They're Really A Pop Band

Pretty much everything about the first two records that John Barrett has put out to date - both under the Bass Drum of Death moniker - have spoken to little more than reckless abandon, attitude-wise, and a rough and ready approach to recording. When I interviewed him around a year and a half ago, though - when he was promoting his second, self-titled album - he spoke of his desire to move away from home recording, and towards a proper band dynamic. All these months later, he’s kept his promise - and then some.

“It was funny,” laughs Barrett. “When I was in high school, I was the kid who was trying to cram everything in last minute; I was never one for prior planning, to put it mildly. After I finished the last record, though, it had kind of felt like a chore, honestly. Not that it wasn’t fun, but I’d spent the better part of two years on the road in support of (debut) GB City, and then I turned right around and made the self-titled. It got to the point where I needed to shake up the creative process - I didn’t just want to make the same record over. I brought in Len (Clark), who I’d been playing drums with the last couple of years on tour, to help with the writing, and then Jake Portrait from Unknown Mortal Orchestra came into produce. Having other people helping with the arrangements was what I wanted; it helped me bounce the ideas around a little differently.”

Rip This, the incendiary third Bass Drum LP, strikes a brilliant balance between the rock rawness of GB City and the sharp pop sensibilities of last year’s Bass Drum of Death. Most crucially, though, it sounds ten times cleaner and sharper than Barrett’s work ever has; by eschewing USB microphones in favour of a real studio, he’s taken a real stride forwards.

“We recorded at a studio in Sonoma County, California, just north of San Francisco,” details Barrett. “Jake had done some work there before, so he knew the owner, and was super comfortable with him, and with all the gear he had. We were basically able to get a little bit of a bro/homie deal, and get a bit of a discount, which was awesome; the studio itself was just amazing, with all sorts of old shit, old equipment that was pretty much irreplaceable. We just had our pick of that shit.”

The other consideration for Barrett was ensuring that he could bleed every possible second of value out of the time he was paying for. “We wanted to go somewhere really removed; we didn’t spend much time recording, in the end. I demoed a lot of the songs - most of them, really - before we headed out there. I knew we’d only be able to afford ten or twelve days in the studio at the most, so I wanted us to be somewhere with no distractions - where we could really hunker down and make the most of the time, and work twelve or fourteen hours a day on the music. When I was recording at home, I could work at my leisure; I was never on the clock, because I was never paying a certain rate an hour. I had to be a lot smarter this time. The alternative would’ve been going to New York or somewhere - the kind of place where, when you’re done with your parts, you just want to go out and get into some shit. Out in Sonoma, there was nothing to do but sit around and listen to the edits and the mixes, and we picked up on so many little details doing that - it was the ideal way of working.”

Bringing in Clark, who’s been a staple of Bass Drum live shows for a couple of years now, to flesh out the recorded cuts behind the kit was a key part of Rip This’ gestation. “I demoed everything out the same way for this album, for seventy-five percent of the songs,” recalls Barrett. “I’d play the drums on my own, pretty rudimentarily, and then show it to Len to get his input. For the other twenty-five percent, we’d just jam over a riff I had. What was cool was that I was able to just kind of filter everything through the way he plays; I would often start with the drum part anyway, so to have somebody who was so much more technically gifted than me taking on the responsibility of refining that part of the songs was a huge boost. I mean, if I’d tried to record those parts the way he does, I’d still be there now!”

It feels like we’re defeating the point, though, to talk exclusively about the percussion on Rip This; after all, it’s most striking feature is the cleanliness of the sound, and the polish on the guitars - a million miles away from the endearing scuzz of GB City. Last time I spoke with Barrett, he mentioned that a cleaner sound was always going to be an aim next time around, but I also wondered if Rip This’ neatness came as a result of its more salubrious studio surroundings. “I think it was a little bit of both,” he says. “If you have a lot of really great-sounding equipment, it makes absolutely no sense to deliberately try yo make it sound shitty. All the distortion on my past records were pretty much just the result of me using GarageBand and a USB mic, you know? There’s only so much you can do with that setup, in terms of sound quality. In the past, it was like, if I can’t make it sound good, then I should at least make it sound cool.”

“And then, the other thing is this; I feel like, if you make the kind of music that we do, and if it sounds scratchy and lo-fi, people maybe see that recording style as being a crutch for not being able to play properly. I wanted to show that we could still make a cool and tough sounding record, where you could actually hear everything. With Jake on the boards, I knew that was possible; I knew he could steer me away from the two records I’d already made, which sounded blown-out as shit.”

Perhaps the most striking move forwards on Rip This, though, is just how poppy it sounds. Opener ‘Electric’, for example, is a straight-up singlaong; you go back and view Barrett’s past work through the lens of this record, and you realise that his mainstream sensibilities have pretty much been there all along. “I think this album probably splits the difference between GB City and the self-titled, on that score,” says Barrett. “I felt like the songs on the self-titled were a lot poppier, but they were kind of coated in a ton of distortion, so it wasn’t all that obvious on first listen. This time, there’s some that are really poppy, but not a lot more so than those I’ve written in the past; it’s just that the production makes it feel like more of a departure than it really is. I’ve always been gravitating towards pop, right from the beginning.”

My first live encounter with Bass Drum of Death came in the back room of one of Manchester’s most distinguished boozers, the Castle Hotel, three years ago this month. Barrett played a fast and furious set that night, but his show his evolved considerably since - in terms of the subtleties, at least, if not duration. “We actually just did a short tour of the south, where we played a lot of new songs and tried out different setlists, just to see how things worked out. We’re still figuring things out, but the important thing to me is this; even though we’ve got three records worth of material to play, I really feel like we should keep the sets short and snappy, still. I know when I go to a gig, I find it hard to pay attention for longer than forty-five minutes or an hour, unless it’s somebody who’s a fucking legend. I just want to be able to pick the setlist that blows by the best, you know?”

Looking to the future, you have to assume that Rip This marks something of a watershed moment for Barrett; surely he won’t go back to lo-fi home recordings after enjoying the all the trappings of the modern studio? “I wouldn’t say it’s completely behind us,” he concedes, cautiously, “but this record has definitely opened up my eyes to what’s possible when you’ve got incredible gear, and when you can spend times on things properly. In the past, I totally has this attitude of “first take, best take - if it sounds good, move forwards.” Now, though, I want to place a little bit more emphasis on studying things; I want to be able to spend as much time as possible in the studio, to play around more, and to experiment as much as possible. It’s weird; I used to be totally about rushing though everything. Now, all I want to do is take my time.”

Rip This is available now via Innovative Leisure.