Breaking Down With Broken Bells

Okay so I’m here with of James Mercer, front man of The Shins and Danger Mouse a.k.a. Brian Burton and collectively they are now known as Broken Bells.

Thanks a bunch for giving us the time guys.

James: No worries.

Dwarf: Alrighty, so firstly, you guys met back at Roskilde back in 2004, yeah?

James: That’s correct.

Dwarf: What happened then and how did it further to you guys deciding to create this collaboration several years later?

James: Do you want take this one Brian? *laughs*

Brian: Well, back then we sort of just hung out. I was in a band called Ready Then, so then we kind of just kept catching up over the years as more acquaintances and we’d see each other on tour now and then.

Then eventually James was taking a break and wanted to do something different from The Shins and I was finishing up touring with Nas and wanted to do something completely different too. So we just decided to get together and see what would happen if we went in and started writing some songs together and see what came of it.

Dwarf: If I’m not mistaken, you guys also kept your musical association a complete secret, yes?

James: Yes. Oh well, I mean we did our best. *laughs*

Brian: Yeah we kept it secret from the media but our friends knew.

Dwarf: What was the reasoning behind this, and what difficulties or benefits did you find from working under a completely unknown project?

James: Oh well, you know if nobody knows you are doing a recording thing like this. You just basically keep it low pressure. We never even thought about what people might be thinking it might sound like.

We could have announced immediately ‘Hey we’re going to start a band, we’re going to write a record and we want to get signed’ we could have done that all before we even started recording, but that would have just been silly.

Dwarf: So tell us of the process of when you guys were writing and recording the album. How did you work together, how did you combine both your talents and creativity?

Brian: Well usually we would just come in each day when nothing was pre-written from either one of us each day we’d start playing instruments and coming up with ideas and one would throw off ideas to the other and we’d start to develop something that felt really cool to the both of us and we’d start putting the songs together.

We just did that every day. We’d do that for a week or two every few months for about a year. We recorded a lot of ideas and just stuck with what we felt were the best ones.

Dwarf: How would you describe the relationship between both of your musical backgrounds and what effect that had on your sound?

Brian: I don’t think we came from that far different musical backgrounds, lately I’d been working on a lot of music in general, some of it indie-rock, rock n’ roll, psych pop whatever you want to call it. James and I have very similar taste in music, the background being 60s rock-pop and r’n’b, 70s and even some early 80s.

So I mean we really had a lot in common. There was never any motive to play a certain genre, we’d just get on the instruments and play them ourselves and come up with something just how we feel any two people in a band would do.

Dwarf: So last month you guys released the name of the first single from the album through a cryptic binary email and then another viral campaign of leaking 30 seconds bits of a track. What was the reasoning behind this?

James: Well really they were all just ideas we had thrown together to try and generate some curiosity about this ‘new’ band.

Brian: Yeah creating some mystery you know.

James: Yeah definitely some mystery.

Dwarf: The track titled ‘The High Road’ has been ridiculously well received and has only furthered the hype around you two. Tell me about the track and how it came about to being the debut single?

Brian: I think more than anything we just wanted it to be the first thing anyone heard. It’s the first song on the album, too. It mixes a lot of stuff that is on the album and has a lot of both of us on it.

It’s hard to tell when one of us starts and the other takes over; it’s definitely the first thing we want people to hear. We didn’t think of it as being a big single or anything, we just figured ‘well they are going to need to hear something first, why not this’.

Dwarf: Well now with the album mastered and set to be released, do you see you two touring this album?

Brian: Yeah we’re definitely going to tour. Well next week we start rehearsing for live stuff, we’ll have a live band and everything for our shows. We’ve been writing some more stuff together so at the moment we both see this as our main projects.

Dwarf: What elements of your other projects could we expect in a Broken Bells live show?

Brian: I don’t think it will encompass much from our live shows with our other projects. It’s a new thing for both of us, we’re just trying to figure out what it will sound like live, we don’t really know yet ourselves. We’ll start rehearsing next week and see what sounds we come up with, but yeah, definitely looking forward to touring it.

Dwarf: You’ve both spent a bit of time touring in Australia, James with The Shins and Brian with Gnarls Barkley several years ago, do yourself visiting our shores again any time with Broken Bells?

James: Oh yeah I love touring in Australia. My band has always had really good shows there and I know Brian loves to go to Australia. So yeah we definitely plan to be taking the tour to Australia.

Dwarf: Awesome. Well thanks a bunch for your time guys, really looking to the record dropping and hopefully seeing you two on our shores very soon!

James: Yeah thanks a lot for the interview, we can’t wait to get down there and play some shows.

Brian: Thanks man.

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