Production Notes: Soundtrack of Our Lives

Svenska Grammaphon Studion—the room where The Soundtrack of Our Lives recorded its new Origin Vol. 1 and its similarly scintillating predecessor, Behind the Music—sits next door to a dive bar in the Swedish port city of Gothenburg. The place is in such a seedy neighborhood that the musicians frequently have to step over prone bodies on their way in and out of the facility. It’s just part of the local color for these guys. TSOOL bass player Kalle Gustafsson Jerneholm, who owns the studio, started carting in gear four years ago and had the room cherried-out just in time for the Origin sessions.

The degree of intricacy that distinguishes Origin wouldn’t have been possible had the band been on the clock. Having a room of their own allowed for the endless tinkering with sound and arrangement the tracks required. “It’s just basically playing in the studio, trying to figure out the best possible version,” TSOOL founder/frontman/lyricist Ebbot Lundberg explains about the refining process. “For us, it’s all about the sounds. We’ll say, ‘We wanna use the sounds of the guitars the way Captain Sensible [of The Damned] did in Machine Gun Etiquette—that specific sound they do on “Plan 9 Channel 7.”’ So we’ll listen to that track and try to come up with that sound. Or maybe the Pretty Things—‘I want that vocal sound.’ And now we have the equipment to get these sounds—that’s the great thing. We don’t have to look for it anymore, and that’s a luxury in itself.”

“We tried to capture all eras of recording: old Neve desks, ’60s keyboards, whatever we can find,” Jerneholm says of the impressive array of equipment he’s gathered. “I’m not really a collector; you just don’t want to be limited sound-wise when you do an album. … So our studio has become a kind of center for Scandinavian acts.” Among the bands recording at SGS in recent months were former Smiths members Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce, Silverbullit (known as Citizen Bird in the U.S.) and The Hives.

“It’s like a museum when you walk into the studio,” Lundberg marvels. “We have a mic from the Second World War that belonged to [Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph] Goebbels. Kalle even bought the mixing table Deep Purple used for ‘Smoke on the Water’—the one they’re singin’ about in the song.” He chuckles at the thought.

Lundberg admits, almost apologetically, that digital technology has entered the world of TSOOL. “Pro Tools is getting better and better,” he says. “It’s easier if you want to cut something out—you don’t have to splice the tape anymore. So it goes back and forth, really. We run it through Pro Tools, but when we do the actual mix, we mix it down on two-track again.”

The band co-produced the album with Johan Forsman, but the six members are so experienced at recording that they all take turns manning the console. “It’s my studio,” says Jerneholm, “so I’m most responsible, along with Johan. We know how to do it ourselves, but it’s kind of weird to produce your own album entirely, because you lose a lot of energy arguing with all your bandmates.”

Most of the tracks start with drums, which are recorded to two-inch tape in the traditional manner. From there, the process depends on the needs of the particular song. “Sometimes we nail a song instantly, and sometimes it takes months to get the right overdubs,” Jerneholm explains. “Our songs are very much layered with small details that you might not notice instantly. That’s kind of the trademark for our recordings, I think—that you can actually listen to them over and over again and keep picking up new details.”

TSOOL is so good at its aural kleptomania that only a handful of passages on Origin are obvious in their, well, origins—like the manic drumming and the Pete Townshend-esque windmill chords that kick the raging “Transcendental Suicide” into gear “Baba O’Riley” style, or the turbo-charged jangle of “Borderline,” which sounds like some newly unearthed outtake from The Notorious Byrd Brothers. In Soundtrack’s world, every reference point has equal legitimacy, and they tackle each with enthusiasm.

“We like to spice it up,” Lundberg acknowledges. “It’s like a production trick … you add something that you always thought was really cool if used in the right way. It’s the attitude; it’s the whole spirit of those bands. That’s something that I miss—like a true expression in everything. You can find bands [that have it], but it’s kind of hard nowadays.”

“We’re a classic band in a way, just doing normal stuff,” Jerneholm adds. “But people think that’s weird these days, for some reason.”

When I ask Jerneholm about the apparent delight the band takes in pilfering from the past, he says, “We’re not ashamed of that—quite the opposite. It’s a good feeling that people can actually recognize small parts. If you can blend it right to make it your own, then you’re on the right track. That’s always been true of rock music: taking one tradition and twisting it around somehow. It’s really hard to do something entirely new; that only happens with a few bands a century, like Kraftwerk or whatever. But those kinds of changes usually occur with technical developments. We go in all different directions—we can use ancient instruments or new ones, we don’t care. It’s just interesting to combine all different types of sounds. We’re not snobbish about it—whatever feels good.”

Explaining why Origin is Soundtrack’s strongest album yet, Lundberg says, “We didn’t know each other in the beginning. We weren’t really a band; we were just an idea. You couldn’t hear that on record, but now it’s simpler, in a strange way. It’s not so complicated anymore. We kind of grew into this stronger band. With this band now, it’s kind of like putting a coin in a jukebox.”