Production Notes: Brad Wood

Ben Lee has impeccable timing. A few months ago, the Australian artist called his producer friend Brad Wood with some news. “He told me he had a bunch of new songs and wanted to make an album,” Wood recalls, “but he said, ‘I can’t work in a studio—it makes my stomach just drop.’ I said, ‘Hey, what a coincidence.’” As it happened, the producer was just then finishing construction on a home studio in the garage behind his house, wiring it to the adjacent guesthouse where he’d installed his recording equipment. Lee had no record deal and no budget, but Wood was itching to try out his new setup, and who better to serve as his guinea pig than Lee, four of whose albums he’d produced, starting in 1995 with Frail Girl by Lee’s high school band, Noise Addict, when the precocious artist was 15.

After showing up on the radar as producer of Liz Phair’s 1993 indie-rock classic, Exile in Guyville, the Chicago native deftly mixed art and commerce on projects with Lee, Veruca Salt, Tortoise and Smashing Pumpkins. Five years ago he left the Windy City for Valley Village, an upscale section of North Hollywood ten minutes from a slew of high-end recording facilities. Wood chose the neighborhood in large part for its convenience; it wasn’t until 2004 that he realized how much more convenient—and affordable—it would be to make records in his own backyard.

Sitting in front of his Mac with the ubiquitous Pro Tools software visible on the monitor, the affable, low-key Wood opens a folder containing his notes on Lee’s now-completed album, Awake Is the New Sleep (New West). “Every project has its own folder,” he explains. “I like having a sonic blueprint before I start, just to minimize the waste.” During preproduction, while Lee played the new material on acoustic, Wood spontaneously jotted down arrangement ideas. His notes are full of the sort of shorthand that’s second nature to record producers and rock critics: “Talking Heads-like rhythm section,” “Harvest-like verses,” “Spiritualized second half,” “Sly & Robbie reggae beat,” etc. “Billy Corgan hated that,” says Wood, with obvious amusement. “He’d say, ‘No referencing.’” A few sheets have larger, less-sure-handed printing. “That’s my seven-year-old, Olivia,” he explains. “She wanted to help Daddy with his work.”

As Lee played him the new songs, Wood became increasingly excited. “Knowing him, but also being a fan, this is the record I’d always hoped that he would grow into making,” he says of Awake Is the New Sleep. “It was one of those rare instances where I knew going in that it was gonna completely be great. And then the only concern was just to not screw it up. I felt the same way about Ben’s record as I did about Exile in Guyville.”

Along with Wood, Lee’s handpicked team included two other old friends and musical colleagues: American guitarist McGowan Southworth and Aussie keyboardist Lara Meyerratken, both of them remarkably inventive musicians. Indeed, the haunting sounds that Meyerratken was able to coax from her Roland synthesizer—which Wood then ran through effect boxes and his own collection of analog synths, including a rare original Putney—make as deep and lasting an impression as Lee’s lyrics and vocals, to the point where the settings are inseparable from the songs. “She’s the secret weapon, as far as I’m concerned,” the producer raves. “She’s super-cool.” Wood played bass and drums on a few tracks, while Lee brought in some L.A. friends—including actor and ex-Phantom Planet drummer Jason Schwartzman and Rilo Kiley singer Jenny Lewis—for the rest of the parts.

At a time when the world seems especially grim—a perception that’s being reflected in much of today’s more serious popular music—Awake Is the New Sleep is suffused with optimism and a sense of infinite possibility. “These songs came quickly,” Lee writes in an open letter about the record. “I just tried to get out of their way …. The music is inviting me on strange adventures. It’s asking me to dance. It wants to tell me all about how lucky I am to be at the feet of this awesome mystery called life.” But if Lee’s mission is essentially spiritual, neither has he skimped on the ear candy—this album is loaded with hooks.

Several of them are shoehorned into “Catch My Disease,” a catchy little sing-along with the constant refrain, “And that’s the way I like it.” The arrangement juxtaposes a stomping beat appropriated from Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” rapturous strumming inspired by Cornershop’s “Brimful of Asha” and a plinking toy piano for an effect that’s the aural equivalent of being tickled—and that’s just the verses. This is the kind of song people know by heart after hearing it once. “My seven-year-old got it easily,” Wood says about Olivia’s reaction. “It follows up a massive hook with an even more massive hook. The first time I heard him play it, I thought, ‘This is one of those songs that only comes along every so often.’ I said, ‘Hey, look, Ben, let’s just make this everything it’s supposed to be; let’s just have fun with it. We’ve gotta make it even more hooked-out.’ So that’s where the foot-stomping and the toy piano came in. It’s about as stupid a conceit as you can come up with.” Maybe so, but this kind of stupid requires smarts.

Since completing Lee’s album, Wood has continued to make records in his cozy backyard facility, leading to nearly constant foot traffic as musicians enter through the gate at the side of the main house and tramp back to the studio. And that, he says, is the one drawback to working at home: “As you can see, it’s been hell on the lawn.”