It is often said that people undergo transformations while out on tour.
The same can be said for songs.
Last summer, Boston basement-pop trio All Talk headed out on a three-week tour that packed in 18 shows in 20 days, taking the band down the East Coast, west to Austin, then re-routing back to the northeast. Days before they left, guitarist/vocalist Cole Maxwell brought an early demo for a track called “Sunday Driver” to drummer Dan Shapiro and bassist Tim Mensel.
Over those 18 shows, All Talk performed “Sunday Driver” every night, and every night the song evolved. By the time they got back, it was ready to be properly recorded, and was brought to the Converse Rubber Tracks Studio in Boston.
“This song changed almost every night [on tour] and was easily one of the songs we most looked forward to playing on each stop,” Mensel tells Vanyaland. “[It] gave us something to talk about in between episodes of delirium and we’d work out new arrangements in the car to try at the night’s show. The arrangement we landed on at the tail end of our trip is what’s presented in the recording from Rubber Tracks.”
On the final version of “Sunday Driver,” which you can listen to below, All Talk show off a casual confidence; the track grooves along over four minutes as the guitar lines weave in and out of Maxwell’s lyrics. It’s a nice evolution and progression of sound from the band’s Summer 2016 EP, upstairs/downstairs, but still displays the trio’s careful guitar-pop intricacy.
“We were excited when Rubber Tracks got in touch with us, because while we are waiting to get back in the studio this spring to record our sophomore full length, we didn’t really want to wait to record and release this track that came to be on tour,” Mensel adds. “Finishing the track was a real family affair as we took the track engineered by Baines Kluxen at Converse HQ to our friend Bradford Krieger who runs Big Nice Studio in Lincoln, Rhode Island, to mix. Bradford’s studio is gorgeous and he helped us add some overdubs, reamp certain parts, and mixed and mastered it all beautifully. It all felt like one of the most organic processes we’ve experienced writing and arranging through recording and mixing and we think the track reflects that.”
Hear “Sunday Driver” live this evening when All Talk play Great Scott in Allston for the latest Eye Design party, with Glass House, Muddler, and Peace Prize. More details on the A+ flyer after the jump.
All Talk featured photo by Charlotte Gellene.
