Riding high off the critical success of their latest album, Leaves Turn Inside You, Olympia, Wash., group Unwound paid a visit to Memorial Union Terrace Aug. 30. While the band’s new double-disc album introduces a new, perhaps more refined sound than its previous efforts, fans of Unwound’s earlier, more raw works will be hard pressed to find flaw with the polished, carefully constructed masterpiece. Those unfamiliar with the group will no doubt find the group’s odd, rambling melodies and unconventional orchestrations an intriguing listen. Its visit was certainly one of the more exciting events to hit Memorial Union Terrace in quite some time.
Drummer Sara Lund took a few minutes to speak with The Daily Cardinal about the tour and the new album.
Leaves Turn Inside You was recorded at your newly constructed studios, MagRecOne. Tell me about that.
Basically, it’s in the basement of this ... farm house in the middle of nowhere that ... [guitarist/vocalist] Justin Trosper lives in. It’s a pretty big house with a really big basement. We built an incredibly sturdy and soundproof control room ... and then the live room is basically an unfinished cement basement, ... cold and dank.
How long did it take you to record Leaves?
If you think about it from when we first tried recording and none of that ended up on the record, that would be a good two and a half years, but starting with when we first started in the new space, and doing stuff that did end up on the record, that was probably like nine months.
How involved was producer Steve Fisk with this album? I know he’s been pretty involved with you, but with the new studio, how much did you actually use his services?
Very little. His main role on this record was just letting us borrow a bunch of his keyboards. He played a couple of things here and there, but he never came to our studio when we were recording or anything, and we just went to his studio in his house and he has the same kind of tape deck that we have. So we just recorded and used his Melotron and his Arp and a couple of his weird keyboard things, and he had some comments here and there, but he was not at all involved as he had been on previous records.
How much weird keyboard can we expect to hear at the live show?
The live show is kind of a new and exciting thing for us. We actually played last night for the first time with our new setup; we have a second guitar player with us and a keyboard player with us, so there’s actually five people playing. There’s a significant amount of keyboard work being done, but we actually don’t have a Melotron with us. Our friend Brandt [Sandeno], who was actually the first drummer for Unwound [is playing the keyboards].
When was the last time you went on tour?
The last time we toured around the U.S. was about three years ago. We toured all around Europe two years ago.
Your last album has received a lot of critical acclaim, but it’s quite different from its predecessors. How are your fans reacting?
That’s a good question. I don’t really know yet. We’ve done six shows since the record came out. So it’s kind of hard to say what—we’re about to find out when we go on this tour. I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from a lot of people I’ve run into.
Why this change in sound?
I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that we had an infinite amount of time and our own space to work in, and also related to the maturing of the band. It seems like a drastic change in some ways, but it’s also a very logical next step ... at least for us, if you think about the progression of the records, like being able to take a little more time in the studio and experiment with different recording techniques. Playing the role of producer puts you in a position where you pay closer attention the way everything sounds—you listen to music a lot differently. You listen to an album and all of a sudden think, “Wow, that sounds really amazing,” as opposed to just, “What a cool song.” If we were 19 and had a year to make a record in our own studio, it probably wouldn’t sound like this. However, I think that it’s a logical next step for us to make a record that sounded like this.
You spent all this time recording, yet you were still able to come out with a double disc album at an affordable price. How did you manage this?
That’s mostly the genius of the independent label. The deal we worked out with [current label] Kill Rock Stars, instead of having them pay a bunch of money to have us go to some fancy studio in Seattle and pay a producer and everything, the just gave us a chunk of money and with that money, we bought all kinds of equipment for our studio .... All the money that we got for the recording budget went into the building of the studio and the building of the record.
