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Anberlin
Thursday, July 5
Race City Speedway
Creating the perfect mood was a priority for Florida’s Anberlin when choosing a spot to record their third album, Cities. They continued their relationship with producer Aaron Sprinkle, recording in his picturesque Seattle studio complex.
"Seattle is one of our favourite cities of all time," says lead singer Stephen Christian. "It just feels like a home for us and being in a band, obviously, you don’t get a lot of time at home. We wanted it in an environment where we could all just drop our guard and hang out and have a little time to breathe."
The Compound studios, which have seen the likes of Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and Temple of the Dog lay down tracks, gave birth to a dozen songs ranging from emo ballads to theatrical screamo numbers. Accented with varied musical accessories like a choir, electro-pop bridges and even orchestral accompaniment, Cities excels in transitioning through diverse song structures.
"Minus the orchestra and minus the boys’ choir, because obviously we can’t fit 90 people into a bus, I think we do a pretty good job at re-creating the whole structure live," Christian asserts.
More important to the vocalist is that listeners pay attention to the carefully crafted lyrics. An admirer of the lyrical work of Thrice’s Dustin Kensrue and Aaron Weiss of Me Without You, Christian is frustrated at times with the lack of listener engagement. "I think our generation, the modern-day youth, are just waiting for a poppy hook," he says. "It gets a little frustrating sometimes, because I know there are some lyrcists out there that take so much time in developing their lyrics and trying to write something with meaning. And so when people don’t even listen and don’t even care, it kind of defeats the purpose.
"I’ve always wanted to be a writer of some sort, I don’t think I’m a good novelist or anything like that, but I’ve always been interested in writing. So ever since the age of 15, each night I would force myself to write at least two poems," he says. "And I look back at them and I’ll read them now and they’re the most godawful things… ‘the sky is blue and so are you, is anything new.’ But over time I think it started to develop to putting words together and using my mind as a thesaurus to try and come up with new and creative ways to say (things) that other people could not only relate to but could walk away learning something."
Christian travels with a journal in tow to capture any unique moments, such as a recent meeting with the Dalai Lama while touring in Australia, and the subsequent thoughts and emotions such occurrences conjure. Having come a long way from the teenage poetry he cites as his starting block, Christian’s writing is more often than not lightly doused in symbolism, heavily introspective and, though simple at first glance, complements the soundscape it is bound to. |
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