I first saw the Redwalls at a loft in Pilsen in early 2003, back when they were called the Pages. They were still teenagers–most of them are only barely of drinking age now–and their set was largely Dylan and Beatles covers, played with a surplus of charm and enthusiasm. Since then the boys from Deerfield have been through the major-label wringer–the kind of thing that’s squeezed the life out of many a young band–but I get the same feeling from their new third album, The Redwalls, that I got watching them tear up that loft party almost five years ago.
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I’m not a big fan of De Nova, and neither are the Redwalls. Capitol sent them to producer Rob Schnapf, whose credits include Beck and the Foo Fighters, and the band got a bad feeling as soon as he decided to track the drum parts in isolation. “They have a formula in those slick recording studios,” says guitarist Andrew Langer. Guitarist Logan Baren compares the experience to being on an assembly line. “We were a very young, naive band,” says bassist Justin Baren, Logan’s brother. “We just played rock ‘n’ roll music and that was what we loved to do.” That love doesn’t cut through the dehumanizing professional gloss of De Nova, though–and the record’s weak sales meant that when EMI merged Capitol and Virgin this winter, the Redwalls didn’t have the clout to survive the resulting purges.
The Redwalls includes plenty of Stonesy rave-ups like “Hangman” and “They Are Among Us,” and tracks like “Summer Romance” and “Little Sister” are laced with sentimentality that evokes Dylan, Lennon, and maybe even Tom Petty. But even the pretty bits feel unrefined and raw, in part because the band recorded the bulk of the instrumental tracks live and in the same room–almost the exact opposite of the way De Nova was assembled. Producer Tore Johansson (the Cardigans, Franz Ferdinand) was a major influence on the sessions. “He’s a real producer,” says Logan. “People think there are a lot of producers. There really aren’t. There’s a lot of glorified engineers. A producer is someone who looks at the song, at the bigger picture.” During 41 days in Malmo, Sweden, the band winnowed down about three dozen songs to the 12 on the album, playing the hell out of them until everyone was satisfied. They only took one day off. “It was never a drag,” says Langer.
