Classic & Current Contemporary Non-Schlock-Rock Metropolitan Music

2011 Adam Lazzara Interview - New Taking Back Sunday Album

The New Taking Back Sunday Record & Its Songs

Taking Back Sunday release their fifth album June 28, 2011. The album comes nine years after Eddie Reyes, John Nolan, Shaun Cooper, Mark O'Connell, and Adam Lazzara presented us with Taking Back Sunday's first album, Tell All Your Friends. Until now, Reyes, O'Connell, and Lazzara have been the only common denominators of Taking Back Sunday as other talented musicians wove their way through the band's lineup for albums two, three, and four. All of these records were named from a song lyric on the album.

Album five marks a change in the nomenclature of Taking Back Sunday album titles. Taking Back Sunday's new album is eponymous, i.e., "self-titled" - named after the band.

I generally associate self-titled albums with a band's first record. Yet there have been many exceptions to this practice, for instance Pearl Jam's 8th album, From First to Last's 3rd album, and The Beatles' "white album." And then there are Peter Gabriel's four eponymous albums.

The significance of Taking Back Sunday's choice of self-titling the album comes from something remarkable that led to its creation - the reintegration of the five musicians who gave us Tell All Your Friends: Eddie Reyes, John Nolan, Shaun Cooper, Mark O'Connell, and Adam Lazzara. Whether or not this album marks the start of a stable Taking Back Sunday lineup, it is an anchor point reflecting the reunion of the magic potion that started the band's recording career.

A few weeks ago Adam and I had a long conversation about Taking Back Sunday's new album, the band, and Adam. We met at the house of my friend Mark Kemp, editor of Option Magazine and author of the book Dixie Lullaby. I want to thank Mark for sharing his cats and chats with Annecy (my younger daughter) while Adam and I took over his living room. Thanks also go to Adam for taking out a few hours from his afternoon to talk with me.

The Album: Taking Back Sunday by Taking Back Sunday

"We decided with this record to just leave it self-titled, " says Adam.

For this record, the band worked with Eric Valentine, who also produced Louder Now, the band's third album and major label debut.

"I like to think of him as this kind of mad, sonic genius," says Adam. "He won't record anything unless the sound is exactly right so he plays to the personality of the song, which not a lot of people these days do."

The song "Best Places to Be a Mom" - leaked through Twitter last year - has the high energy melodic pop/rock personality Taking Back Sunday fans know and love. This new Taking Back Sunday album also has hard rock song personalities where guitars are stars. The album's opening track, "El Paso," premiered on Taking Back Sunday's website March 28th with a heavy guitar assault.

The official video for Taking Back Sunday's song "El Paso" was filmed April 6 at Maxwell's in Hoboken, NJ. The director is Steve Pedulla, guitarist for the New Jersey band Thursday.

"There's a lot of that on this record," says Adam, "but 'El Paso' is as far in that direction as this record goes. Some of the songs that didn't make the record are similar so I guess we subconsciously headed that way. There's a song on the record called 'Money' that has this real kind of snotty, 60s kind of garage-y feel to it and that same kind of vibe."

"Even with some of the poppier songs on the record, there are little elements of that," he says. "The transition that goes into bridge of 'Best Places to Be a Mom' is in the same vein as 'El Paso,' even though it's a more pop, more of a happy kind of song."

Another pop-leaning song is "Faith (When I Let You Down)," the record company's choice to be the first single (released April 29th). "I'm awful at picking those things," he says. "On our record Louder Now, that song 'Miami' is one of my favorite songs we've ever done. I was thinking that that would be a single but it never was. So, we leave that up to 'them.'"

"'Faith' is more similar to "Best Places to Be a Mom" but there's a little more space in that song. More 'air.'"

So why was "El Paso" rolled out ahead of the album's first official single?

"We wanted the first thing that we released to be opposite of that to show everyone before the record came out that there's a lot to it," says Adam. "That it's not just this pop record where every song is going to sound the same and feel the same and be the same experience."

When I listen to "El Paso," I hear echoes of several bands known for hard rocking, most notably Jane's Addiction. Adam was amused when I mentioned this because he had been told that by someone else - former Autumn to Ashes drummer Francis Mark, whose new band Tidal Arms played a show in Charlotte recently.

"Fran came through not too long ago. They played at Tremont with Glassjaw and had stopped by the house earlier in the day. I was letting him hear the pre-mixes - this was before the record was mixed. After that song one of the first things he said was 'Man, I hear some Jane's Addiction in there.' And that wasn't even anything we were thinking. I don't hear it but it's a huge compliment."

Also subliminally baked in - at least to my ears - are The White Stripes, Nirvana, and the heavier side of My Chemical Romance. "El Paso" doesn't actually sound like it's by these bands, but the flavor is there. Adam refers to it as "motorcycle music." Adam has a Triumph bike, which he rode to Mark's house. Perhaps there's a connection between the feel of riding the iron horse and the heavy rumble of "El Paso."

"The whole reason it's called 'El Paso' is because when we [the original TBS lineup] got back together, that's where we went. There's this place called The Sonic Ranch outside of El Paso, right on the border. It's this huge pecan farm.

"The guy Tony who runs it has a couple of different studio houses. So we just went and stayed in one. There's nothing around so after about a week there you start to go a little crazy just 'cause there's no outside influence. Kind of like the 'Shining' kind of theory - cabin fever.

"That's why we named it 'El Paso.' When I think about how I felt there, I think of this song."

That's where the original quintet congregated and began the evolution of the new album.

"El Paso" is included on the "Faith (When I Let You Down)" EP along with an acoustic version of "Great Romances of the 20th Century." The original song is on Taking Back Sunday's debut album, Tell All Your Friends. You can download the EP on iTunes.

Adam Lazzara on Digital vs. Vinyl

The June 28 release of Taking Back Sunday's new album includes the CD version and digital download. A vinyl version is expected to be available eventually.

"It won't happen right away," says Adam. "I don't really understand, but there's some kind of politics involved."

Clearly the "album concept" is important to Taking Back Sunday. A lot of thought went into the how the songs were ordered and fit together on the record with the idea of a two-sided platter.

"How it used to be with sequencing a record, that's how everybody looked at it," says Adam. "Here's a collection of songs. This is going to make up Side A and then they move over to Side B. I feel like when it's put together with that in mind of 'what will be the first song on Side B?', then it listens more like a book reads. There's the up and down, the climax. You have more of a personal relationship with the record and with the music. Being as it's hands-on you have to flip it over. You're going through the journey with it. That's how we look at it."

Trying to sequence the songs "album style" can mean bucking the system, however. Adam explains:

"With the digital world everybody is just going through iTunes and previewing songs here and there. One of the things that's become a bummer is that they [powers-that-be-who-decide-song-order] kind of squeeze everything they think could be a hit within the first five or six songs and then the rest of the record is just the 'other songs.' Depending on who you're listening to those could also be great songs. It's almost like records aren't being made to be listened to all the way through these days." He adds, "Not so much the Indie bands that are more prone to put their records on vinyl."

What do Taking Back Sunday consider to be the first song on Side B?

"It's that song called 'Money' because we feel like both sides A and B come out swinging."

The placement of "Call Me in the Morning" at the end of the record was not random either. About that song Adam says, "Since we first wrote it and got it to a place where we were all happy with it and sat back and listened to it we were like 'Oh, man, this is the perfect album closer song!' We thought it summed up the record the best in how it ends - that sentiment is perfect.

"But most everybody else wanted it to be in the middle meaning - in terms of what we're talking about - it would be the closer of side A," says Adam. The reason, he was told, was if that song was all the way at the end of the record:

"'People probably aren't going to hear it.'"

Adam continues, "If somebody buys the record, don't you think they are going to listen to it? I have more faith in music listeners than to think that they're just going to go through and listen to the first three or four songs and never listen to the rest of the record."