Getting to Know... Crystal Antlers

When Mars Volta keyboardist Ikey Owens offers to produce your band's debut EP, you might be onto something good. The California natives that comprise Crystal Antlers, a six-piece headed up by vocalist/bassist Jonny Bell, certainly were. Their self-released, self-titled, Owens-produced EP showcased the band's howling, organ-riffed prog-rock style, channeled in the year since into high-energy live shows and now into the band's first full-length, Tentacles (out this week via Touch and Go). Paste recently caught a few moments on the phone with frontman Bell, who was en route with his bandmates to a show in Tuscon, Ariz., a few days before joining up with Cold War Kids for a string of live dates.

Paste: Your first full-length album is coming out April 7th. How are you feeling?
Bell: We are pretty excited to have a full-length record out. We’ve been able to do a lot so far, just in the EP. So, we are pretty interested to see what happens and how people react to it.

Paste: Was it hard to find your sound? It’s a little different than the EP. Did you work with different producers this time around?
Bell: We did not work with producers this time. Our new record is not produced; it’s just us playing and our friend recording it... [Owens] is really cool, he is awesome. It’s just that this year we’ve been on tour the whole year and we didn’t have a chance to connect.

Paste: How was the recording process different from the EP, since it was a longer record and you didn’t have producers?
Bell: Actually, it was pretty similar to the way we recorded the EP. Almost all the tracking had been done live and then we added some brass and trombone. Damian [Edwards] played saxophones. We kind of knew what we were going for in this LP. We got together with Andrew [King] after we finished the EP. We had a few songs so we had an idea of where it was headed. We didn’t have a concept; we just wanted to do some stuff from the EP and a lot of new stuff.

Paste: Your original guitarist, Errol Davis—why did he come back for the LP?
Bell: We called him before we went up to record this album. We felt like we really missed what he does and he is on tour with us right now. Actually, this is the first time he is playing with us. We are on our way to a show in Tucson, Ariz

Paste: How long did it take you guys to record it and where did you do it?
Bell: We did it up in San Francisco and this studio called The Closer. We played with a band called The Neighbors. We were there for six weeks—we were up there, isolated in the studio and we wouldn’t leave for more than 15 minutes at a time, sleeping and hardly sleeping at all. We played most of the songs live already... There are a couple songs in there that we haven’t played live before we recorded them. For Tentacles, we played all of them live, except for “Painless Sleep” and “Time Erased.”

Paste: How did you guys get started? What made Crystal Antlers happen?
Bell: We met in high school, Kevin and I, and we were in a music class together and our teacher was drunk most of the year and he was arrested for child molesting. So we were able to do whatever we wanted in this music room and we got to practice. A couple of years later, we started the band and Kevin and Errol started playing with us. Victor came in at the same time with a huge musical background and his organ playing. Damian went on tour with us and started doing his percussion on stage. Last year, Andrew joined the band and he knew Damian. And Errol just came back.

Paste: You recently toured Europe for the first time. How did that go?
Bell: It was amazing; we were there for about two months and we played like five shows in London and they were completely packed, almost sold out. We met a lot of different people. We ran into some friends that we knew from the U.S., like our friend Chandler from New York and we met this band called Women from Calgary... We played all kinds of venues. We were able to go all over Europe, all the way down from Italy to Stockholm.

Paste: Do you have any crazy stories from your live shows?
Bell: We played a biker fest on the old strip in Las Vegas. One of the bikers came up on stage and played the encore with us.

Listen to "Andrew," the first single from Crystal Antlers' Tentacles: