BEING in a recording studio on the other side of the Atlantic, laying down the tracks that will form the debut album by your new band, is intimidating enough as a scenario. But imagine looking through the big glass window and seeing one of your musical heroes pressing the buttons on the mixing desk.
That’s what Ewan Grant and Owen Wicksted of WOMPS faced when they travelled from Glasgow to Chicago to work with Steve Albini. The post-hardcore pioneer might dislike the sleeve credit “producer” (he prefers “recording engineer”) but he has played his part on albums by Nirvana, The Breeders, The Wedding Present, PJ Harvey and Jarvis Cocker, to name but a few. And he’s pretty influential as a musician too.
Grant reckons he first came across Albini the producer via Pixies’ Surfer Rosa album, before getting into Albini the musician’s current band Shellac and moving back through his recorded output to the legendary Big Black. Some detractors claim that Albini’s prolific engineering craft is little more than pressing the record button but Grant begs to differ.
“What he taught us was more an attitude, and to believe in our guts with performances,” he argues. “I’m not sure he brings much to the writing side but he allows the band to be themselves and captures it perfectly, good and bad, and that’s why we wanted to work with him. We’re very interested in growing and learning, and he has accelerated that growth exponentially.”
Grant’s name will be familiar to those with an ear on the Scottish alt-rock scene. Playing in an earlier incarnation as Algernon Doll, he developed his songwriting through three albums, from Elliott Smith-style acoustic confessionals to Sub Pop-style grunge workouts. These were solo projects in all but name, but the shift to WOMPS definitely marks the arrival of shared writing duties.
“There was a time in the first sessions with Albini when Owen and I realised we were better off writing as a band,” Grant explains. “It’s very important, when recording live, that things are as organic as possible and that ideas are coming from more than one place. I don’t think I would have given up my benign dictatorship for anyone unless there was some sort of chemistry, but I’m lucky to have found that with Owen.
“He’s very involved in the arranging of the songs, and now he writes the bass parts and some synth melodies, so it has changed how we write vastly. We can also jam out parts live much more as there are no boundaries and we’re lucky to be on the same page all the time. It’s something I do not take for granted.”
The rhythmic drive of the drums is much closer to the creative core of WOMPS’ new material, particularly on the likes of Manners and Cancer Of The Bone from that Albini-produced debut, Our Fertile Forever, released via Displaced Records on June 10.
This is the product of the band thinking as a duo (Scott McColl and Neil Bannatyne alternate bass duties, although Wicksted has been playing bass on recent demos) and suggests that there’s no going back now to the Algernon Doll back catalogue. It would be a shame, though, if some of those older songs – Sweet Nothing, Spilt Milk Perfume – never saw the light of day again.
“We’re more concerned with creating new material and constantly evolving, rather than going backwards,” Grant insists. “I’m sure it would be fun to play those songs again, and it’s very flattering that people would like to hear them, but we put a lot of emphasis on constantly changing.
“Since writing and recording Our Fertile Forever, we’ve moved on to cover vastly different ground. We’re finding ourselves with each practice and idea, and I don’t think we’ll ever do a similar album to the last.”
WOMPS play Brew At The Bog, at Bogbain Farm, Inverness, tomorrow; The Phoenix, Inverness as part of XpoNorth, June 8; Stereo, Glasgow, June 11; Electric Circus, Edinburgh, June 12; Mediterranea, Stirling, June 17; Conroys Basement, Dundee, June 18; and The Tunnels, Aberdeen, July 1.
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