Your browser is out-of-date!

Update your browser to view this website correctly. Update my browser now

×

The Muffs: ‘Whoop Dee Doo’

L.A. punk outfit The Muffs haven’t released a full-length in a decade, but Whoop Dee Doo is worth the wait.

Photo: Kim Shattuck

L.A. punk outfit The Muffs haven’t released a full-length in a decade, but Whoop Dee Doo is worth the wait. Every part of this raucous, joyous album is made to rock hard, but musically—no assault, just great songs. Singer/guitarist Kim Shattuck, bassist/backing singer Ronnie Barnett and drummer Roy McDonald recorded rhythm tracks to tape with engineer Steve Holroyd at Rogers Boat Studios (Van Nuys, Calif.). They bounced those tracks to Pro Tools, and then Shattuck—who produced the album—took them home to self-record her guitars and vocals.

“With drums, I always want to trust the pros,” Shattuck says. “But I’m super-picky about my overdubs, and I want to do as many takes as I need. So, I go home where I can take my time doing all my vocals, backing vocals, percussion, guitars.”

Shattuck sings and plays in her home office, putting up a Shure Beta 57 on her amp and a Blue Baby Bottle for her voice. “That Blue mic boosts frequencies that are hard to get from my voice, but that I like to hear,” she says. “I didn’t use any compression on my voice, because I realized I didn’t like the way I set it, so I just unplugged it. I knew that Evan [Frankfort, mixing engineer] would use compression, so I just made sure everything I did wasn’t going into the red too much.

“I asked Evan to show me how he compressed when he was mixing, and he showed me that he never hits it hard with any one thing; he has a lot of different compressors, all just barely touching it.”

Close