EQ Magazine - January 2009 - (Page 24)

AMERICAN MAJESTY hen Las Vegas-based quartet The Killers released the chart-scaling Hot Fuss in 2004, they laid the groundwork for other soon-to-be superstar Sin City bands (read: Panic at the Disco) to raid the airwaves and secure the Strip a place in the short list of hot musical centers that aren’t within a hop, skip, and a jump from a shoreline. Expressing a love of dance pop, ’90s rock, and old fashioned sing-along songcraft, Hot Fuss (and follow-up release Sam’s Town) introduced a thrilling young band as likely to channel the epic qualities of Bruce Springsteen (“When You Were Young,” “Sam’s Town”) as the intimate emotions of early Billy Joel (“All These Things That I’ve Done”), the hip-shaking energy of INXS (“Andy, You’re A Star”), and the cold glamor of Joy Division (“Somebody Told Me”) and the Smiths (“Change Your Mind”). In a few short years vocalist Brandon Flowers, drummer Ronnie Vannucci Jr., bassist Mark Stoermer, and guitarist Dave Kuening had solidified a small legacy not bereft of controversy, but chock full of innovation. Never content with standing still for too long, the foursome sought out prolific dance producer Stuart Price to collaborate on a handful of new tracks. After crafting extensive demos recorded at W their practice space and in Vannucci Jr.’s home studio, The Killers decided to tempt fate and its tendency to favor the bold by spending their royalties on a building a new studio, Battle Born. With Price and engineer Robert Root on hand (and a casino’s amount of new gear), the band set out to record their most adventurous album to date, the recently-released Day & Age. What does Day & Age sound like? For sure, Stuart Price’s years producing everyone from Madonna to Missy Elliot has informed The Killers’ worldview. That’s not to say that Day & Age rides over simple house grooves or poppy synth lines—far from it. Vannucci Jr.’s drums still pound the solar plexus like nothing else this side of Hal Blaine/Levon Helm, and Flowers’ grandiose vocals still inspire throngs of teens and young adults stadiumwide. But there’s a sense of experimentation in Day & Age’s sonic supplication. Opener “Losing Touch” confirms this year’s best INXS impersonation, first single “Human” apes New Order plying dark, emotional melodies against a robotic rhythm as does “Spaceman,” a synthetic track which is impossible to resist as pure pop music confetti. But it’s the doleful and heroic “The World We Live In” that confirms Day & Age as a modern classic and The Killers as one of the era’s enduring rock bands. With Vannucci’s mighty drumming cresting like climbers mounting Everest, the song’s whirring synths and layered vocals rise and rotate like some Mahler song cycle. Overall, Day & Age is heady stuff from Las Vegas’ newly-crowned masters of melody. PRODUCER STUART PRICE’S HOME RULE When not recording under the aliases Les Rythmes Digitales, Thin White Duke, or Jacques Lu Cont, British producer/performer Stuart Price lends his heavyweight production talents to such superstars as Madonna, Missy Elliott, Gwen Stefani and Keane. Here, we learn how Price brought his demanding techniques and unusual attitudes to The Killers’ homespun recordings, effectively stretching everyone’s boundaries in the process. Did you enjoy working with the band’s setup at Battle Born? Yes. We built a really good setup based on Logic Pro, an Apogee Symphony system, and the API desk. They already had a huge mic locker. Every piece of equipment used was purchased for this project. But we had limitations as well: The console was originally 16 channels and we had to expand it to 32. The only plug-ins we had were from the Logic Pro bundle, but that wasn’t a big deal. Before the newest version, I always felt that an Apple Logic setup was good only for solo artists. Up until now, Pro Tools, in my mind, was the only thing that reliably provided the power you needed to track a real band, but Apple has really stepped it up. Does that mean that you generally prefer Pro Tools? I have been working with Logic on my own for eight years now, but I love Pro Tools as well. Coming from a background of using Cubase and doing a lot of MIDI sequencing, obviously I gravitated towards that integration within Logic. But there is a cliché that Pro Tools is solely an engineer’s system and Logic is more creative, and I don’t believe that. How much of Day & Age was cut live as opposed to recording each musicians’ part independently? You have to look back to the demos; the band constructed demos Ronnie Vannucci, Jr. (left) makes a mix request to Stuart Price (foreground), while Brandon Flowers (background) watches on. TOREY MUNDKOWSKY 24 EQ JANUARY 2009 www.eqmag.com http://www.eqmag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of EQ Magazine - January 2009

EQ Magazine - January 2009 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Punch In Bob Dylan The Killers Guitar Trax Bass Management Key Issues Drum Heads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet Microsoft Windows Vista Apple Mac OS X "Lite" Software Roundup "Lite" Software Gadgets & Goodies Sounds Room With a Vu

EQ Magazine - January 2009

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