Ahead of 2012’s Hypnotic Nights, Jeff The Brotherhood signed to the major label Warner Bros. Records. The album was co-produced by The Black Keys frontman Dan Auerbach, so it seemed certain to feature a commercially suitable sound. Yet while Hypnotic Nights included some of the most on-point Weezer worship this side of the 1990s, the Nashville duo hung onto their ramshackle roots.
“We basically did Hypnotic Nights the same way we recorded all the rest of our records,” says singer/guitarist Jake Orrall, who’s joined in the band by his brother, drummer Jamin. “Dan wasn’t super worried about whether we got good takes or not. He was just there to tell us if something sounded totally whack or if it sounded good.”
Two-and-a-half years later, Jeff The Brotherhood have returned with their eighth album, Wasted On The Dream, and the anticipated major label makeover has now occurred. Along with guest vocals from Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino and a flute solo from Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson, there are tracks like ‘Karaoke, TN’ and ‘Coat Check Girl’ that outwardly embrace pop melodies and structure.
“When we signed to Warner Bros. we knew what we were getting into in terms of, ‘OK, this is a career thing now, we need to make a record that they can use,’” Orrall explains. “So there was that element of, ‘Let’s give them some hits.’”
To be fair, the band’s predilection towards sugary melodic rock was evident as far back as 2009’s Heavy Days. “Every album gets more accessible and better sounding, because we get better at writing songs and get better at playing our instruments,” says Orrall. But the band’s growing skills aren’t all that distinguish Wasted On The Dream from Jeff’s earlier work. In fact, a more obvious modification is the record’s hi-fi, overdub-happy production.
To ensure this was a smooth transition, the brothers roped in experienced producer Joe Chiccarelli (Spoon, Alberta Cross, The Strokes). “He pushed us pretty hard,” Orrall says. “That was part of it, though – we knew that he was a professional, we knew going into it that it was going to be hard work, but we wanted that. We wanted to make the best album we could make.”
Fortunately, thelaborious recording process hasn’t sucked the life out of the record. Jeff The Brotherhood are an incredibly entertaining live act and Wasted On The Dream still conveys a sense of the pair’s onstage animation. This time around, however, the recording personnel were expanded to include bass player Jack Lawrence (The Greenhornes, The Dead Weather).
“We knew we wanted to have bass on this album for the first time and he’s just an unbelievable bass player,” Orrall says. “Before recording, we went to a practice space and we worked for ten days, just playing choruses over and over and trying out different drum beats and different arrangements of stuff.”
This all happened in the early months of 2014. Then, after various delays, Jeff The Brotherhood were dropped from the Warner roster – a mere two weeks out from the record’s scheduled release. They’ve now shifted back to the land of independence, but that doesn’t mean there’s an aesthetic devolution on the horizon.
“I think the next one will definitely have a different attitude,” Orrall says. “There won’t be as much pressure to do a single and stuff like that. We knew that our long-term hardcore fans might be a little bit weirded out by some of the stuff on Wasted On The Dream, but you’ve got to keep growing. You can’t just keep doing the same thing forever.”
Wasted On The Dream is out now through Dine Alone/Cooking Vinyl.
