Les Savy Fav

It's not a good start to the day. Hungover after having been celebrating my birthday down at the Brixton Academy the night before, I discover that my recording device isn't recording. And then I realise that there's engineering works on the tube.

I get to the hotel in Paddington, 20 minutes late and very apologetic as I meet Tim Harrington and Syd Butler, the lead singer and bassist of Les Savy Fav. With a new album out, we get down to business of talking about it.

MN: It's great to see you have a new album due out on the 1st October, after a 6 year wait since your last studio album. What have you been doing since then?

Syd Butler: We actually record inches.

MN: Oh, yes the collection of singles.

Tim Harrington: Everyone thinks that it doesn't count. It is technically released material, but if you have ever found anyone who has actually heard all the original ones, or even half of the original ones before it came out on inches, they get a little hug. If anyone comes to a show and brings a package of 7" to prove that they have more than 4 of the 9 singles, I'll give them a hug.

[Tim says I can describe him "taking off one my huge metal gloves that I was wearing", and throwing down the gauntlet.. So anyone out there with these original 7", prove it and you'll get a hug!]

Tim Harrington: "It's more exciting to have waited 6 years, because it is the first time in 6 years that we went into the studio and recorded tons of songs all at once. It was a different kind of a process. Previously we had recorded 2 at time, 2 at a time etc.
When Go Forth came out, there was only 4 of the 7" that had come out. We toured heavily for Go Forth, everything was cool and people were liking our band. We got back from a lot of touring of that record. And then people around us said "it's time to start recording a new record" and expected us to get the ball rolling, to follow the trend and stay on the tracks.
We had a 7 inch project that we had conceived before we recorded anything, before we went on tour. We drew the cover art for inches, divided it into 9 pieces, which were the 9 singles that added up to one album, a concept album. We wanted to record in this singles type process. Part of it was a desire not to feel like we were stuck on the tracks of a professional career sort of a band. Album tour, album tour,....keep the ball rolling to expand the empire of your band. We didn't see what the end of the station was for that.. We don't know what the goal is for doing that. Maybe that you can quit your band and then hang about at the pool. As apposed to the goal for us and everyone when they start out, is to make music and maybe people will like it, that would be cool.
The biggest thing that happened in the 6 years was forcing people to accept that that's what we wanted to do. People thought that we were broken up as we weren't making records and we weren't on tour...

Syd Butler: We realised that we could do this at our own pace.

Tim Harrington: The band answering to us as opposed to us answering to the band. Everybody in the band is very involved and serious about music, and loves music. We love it so much that a career musician is almost above the goal. We want to have the freedom to do what we want to do with it.

MN: Can you explain the recording process for the new album, Let's Stay Friends?

Syd Butler: We got a practice place last summer, and went there a couple times a week, and jammed, without writing complete songs. Then we went into the studio, we might have had 3 songs.. It was then that we had Chris Zane in the studio, in November. He was there for 2 weeks to do the basic tracking, after which we took a break a came back for about a week, recorded a bit more and then took a 3 month break, getting back into the studio in April.

Tim Harrington: The thing that was different about the process this time, is that before we had recorded a whole album at once, with Go Forth. Up until this record, the way that we wrote previously, is like the analogy of us being in a forest and you're not sure which way to go, so we would walk in every single possible direction, and see which one was the best. And then we would walk it again, when we were in the studio. This time is was different. Where as before there would be 50 paths per song. This time it was more like, "we've lived in this forest for a long time, let's look around and head towards that pile of moss!
That we had an ability to navigate, and the is a big difference in maturity to this record...that we knew where we were going with it.

[It's at this point that my recording ends......and then it starts up again when I realise so. It's during this "interlude" that we discuss the various guest artists that appear on the record. An impressive list, including Eleanor Friedberger from the Fiery Furnaces, Emily Haines from Metric and Joe Plummer from Modest Mouse / The Black Heart Procession, amongst others. I enquire how these guests came about, and they both say that it was more like getting some friends to help out than actively getting on the phone and hoping that they would say "yes".
Then we talk about the recording process, in bit more detail.]

Tim Harrington: We wrote a lot of songs and even in November, they were still very raw. More raw than we had worked in the past. In the past the songs would be more layered, we would start, and when we were happy with the begining part, we'd then move to the next part and once we got to the end, it was done. We would complete a song, once I started writing the lyrics, and as you start them, everybody starts changing the structure around. When you have both those things,. Before that, so often the music would be really locked down, and the lyrics would only add one picture to the song. This time we kept it very loose until the lyrics were added, and then did a lot of juggling around together..
Which is funny because it feels more alive. It's only one letter but it makes a lot of difference. Some people say "oh this is what it sounds like to see the band live", it's not like that at all.
If one of our big fans had to produce the record, they might want to distort the distort the crap out of everything and go fucking nuts. But we all didn't want to do an imitation of that. It might sound sweet...

MN: Before I go, why the title of the album "Let's Stay Friends"?

Syd Butler: It's a name that we use when we play secret shows.. Maybe ow the secret's out we might have to think of a different name. As long as it's LSF, as in Les Favy Fav. Another one that we had talked about is Let's Start Fucking..

[As I shake hands and say good-bye, I compliment Tim on his choice of t-shirt. It's a Les Savy Fav shirt.]

Tim Harrington: Yeah, man. I think they're the best band in the world, that's why I wear it.

[There's no arrogance in this statement, it is just that. A statment of the fact that Tim believes with all his heart.]

Keep your eyes peeled, their back in town again soon. And you better look carefully, as they may not be playing as Les Savy Fav...