Taking Back Sunday with assistant engineer Chris Rahm (in Fl@bush T-shirt)
Photo: Paul Wiser
The fifth album by tuneful rockers Taking Back Sunday is a work in progress. In June, the bandmembers were in Robert Lang Studios (Seattle), writing and arranging new songs with producer/engineer Eric Valentine, who was also with them for Louder Now (2006).
“This new music is going to feel more like their early stuff,” Valentine says. “They’ve gone back to an earlier version of the band. The guitar player and bass player, John [Nolan] and Shaun [Cooper], who were in the band for their first record, are back.”
Valentine will do all of the engineering and production on the finished songs, but he left the technical decisions on pre-production to Robert Lang staff engineer Nathan Yaccino. “The goal was to provide the band with a relaxed, creative environment rather than setting up awesome sounds,” Yaccino says. “Initially, the five of them set up in the round in our main live room. This didn’t last very long due to drum bleed in the vocal microphones. We ended up putting [vocalists] Adam [Lazzara] and John between two separate airlock doors off to the sides of our live room. We have plenty of iso booths, but this was more to keep the band close to each other for communication purposes. Everything was tracked straight to Pro Tools through our 192 and Apogee Rosetta 800 converters.”
“I was focusing on songs and arrangements, and we had a very capable engineer,” Valentine says. At press time, Lazzara, Nolan and guitarist Ed Reyes were in Valentine’s studio, putting the finishing touches on the arrangements.
