There’s an old saying in music: ‘You have all your life to write your first record and six months to write the second.’ Los Angeles trio Mini Mansions – Michael Shuman, Zach Dawes and Tyler Parkford – have managed to sidestep the ‘sophomore curse’ both by choice and fate: all three band members have plenty going on outside Mini Mansions, including multi-instrumentalist Shuman’s other gig, one Queens of the Stone Age.
Mini Mansions’ 2010 self-titled debut album was an emotive, eclectic release that wandered around between various genres while tying them together with an overall psychedelic tinge. Five years later arrives the follow-up, The Great Pretenders. And while there’s still a sense of ’60s-ness about the record, there’s more of the new wave pastiche hinted at by the debut. It’s more direct and more pop, yet also more complex and nuanced.
“This is just how it evolved,” Shuman says. “It just constantly evolves. I don’t know if you heard our first EP we put out, but the first record is a world different from that, and this is different from the first record. It’s mostly just naturally becoming more comfortable in our roles in the band – especially for me. I mean, I didn’t even play drums before I started the band, and I just have a better idea now about how I want my drums to sound. And I think the same goes for Zach and his pedal board.”
The only general outline the trio followed was that they wanted to make a brighter record than the debut, which got quite dark quite often. “This is a very dark record lyrically, but musically we wanted to make it more upbeat and more fun to play live than maybe our previous record,” Shuman says.
One particularly noticeable evolution in Mini Mansions’ sound is the prominence of the drums. They’re usually quite direct, simplistic parts, yet are pushed way up in the mix.
“Most of the records I like to listen to are very rhythm-section-centric and heavy, and that’s the way I like a lot of my mixes too,” says Shuman. “Although yeah, I like Beatles mixes where the rhythm section is not that loud, but I really like to listen to mixes with loud drums. Also we have a bit of hip hop influence when it comes to the rhythm section – not that we’re trying to write hip hop songs, but because our drums are so minimal there’s only so much we can do with it and only so much I can do. And that’s what I like about it; it stays simple and archaic. And that’s really what hip hop rhythms are like, too. So that’s what we based some of the production off of.”
The Great Pretenders was recorded at Woody Jackson’s Vox Recording Studios, one of the oldest still-running studios in LA, with so much gear available to use that bands find themselves spoiled for choice. One of the most distinctive elements of Mini Mansions’ sound, however, is also one of the simplest.
“One thing we did that I’ve done on the last few recordings – and which is really strange and doesn’t make sense to anybody, but it really works – is there was this 20-inch Gretsch concert tom that we stacked on top of this other floor tom, and we use my floor tom as my kick. So when you stack two drums on top of each other and just hit the one, you get this sound that’s super deep and super thuddy. And that’s just something weird that we tried and now I’ve been doing it the last three times I recorded.”
There are a couple of notable guests on the album: Beach Boys legend Brian Wilson and Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner. “I should first say that I personally didn’t actually sit in a room with Brian Wilson and work with him,” Shuman clarifies. “The process started because Zach was asked to play bass on the new Brian Wilson record. He played on a song and it went really well, so he asked Brian to return the favour and sing on our record.”
The band sent Wilson the song ‘Any Emotions’ to work with. Wilson, who likes to work alone, sent back his parts. “He gave us a lot of stuff,” Shuman says. “You don’t like cutting Brian Wilson but we had to! He gave us so much stuff and it was all amazing and brilliant. Five-part harmonies everywhere! Vintage Brian Wilson. So in the end I didn’t sit in the room with him, but honestly it’s still just as crazy to have him on your record and have it forever. It’s wild.”
Turner’s contribution is a particularly animated vocal on ‘Vertigo’. “It’s Alex’s version of a rap and our version of a West Coast hip hop song like we all grew up on. That was the point, and the idea was to have a different kind of character come in on the second verse as if it was a Wu-Tang song, like, ‘Here comes GZA,’ y’know? Like a new guy coming in. We always imagined a British voice, and when we were recording it Alex was hanging out a lot at the studio and it just so happens he’s British too! So it was a coincidence and it worked out perfectly.”
With our interview coming to a close, Shuman has one last thing to mention, and it’s sure to please his fans Down Under: “Hopefully we’ll see you down there in Australia soon.”
