At this year's SXSW festival, Grizzly Bear brought a new kind of gospel to the Central Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas. Badge and wristband holders who managed to get in were treated to the angelic voice of Ed Droste, complemented by lofty ceiling acoustics and the well-balanced vocals of his three singing bandmates.
For Grizzly Bear's second album, Veckatimest [Warp], sky-high studio spaces were just what the band needed to achieve its otherworldly chamber-pop sound. Bassist and producer/engineer Chris Taylor started recording the band in upstate New York at the Glen Tonche estate, which features a live room with 50- foot-high wood ceilings. The guys also recorded at Droste's grandmother's house in Cape Cod and at a church in Brooklyn. But access to a church didn't automatically result in perfect natural reverb—Taylor was careful with mic placement.
For a couple tracks on the album, the band recorded a girls' choir. Taylor set up a stereo pair of Microtech Gefell M 930 mics in an X/Y pattern, 10 to 15 feet back and about three feet above the girls' heads.
The album's most immediate song, "Two Weeks"—with its "Chopsticks"- esque piano and gorgeous call-andresponse chorus vocals—begs to be heard on repeat. "I'm always listening to a song to make sure there's an event that's maintaining focus, so things don't get nebulous," Taylor says. "[We did that by] changing around the main part, which is a sort of quarter-note piano-ish part, and then adding in a Wurlitzer and a guitar doing the same thing." In addition to changing up the instrument, he also changed the texture. "We'd do things like take room mics in and out to draw things in and then open them up," Taylor says. A large-diaphragm condenser made by Curtis Technology often did the trick.
But it's not always about the room; Taylor uses synthetic effects, too. On "Fine For Now," which plays with dynamics both quiet and— thanks to some overdriven guitars and crash cymbals—more epic, Taylor used reverb from a guitar pedal for some backup vocals. "I ran both the dry and then the wet, distorted signal, pretty heavily distorted, and then mixed in enough of the dry that it sounds clear," he says.
Some of Taylor's favorite effects are the Electro-Harmonix POG octave pedal, Univox Echo Chamber tape delay, and MXR M-190 Digital Delay and M-126 Flanger/Doubler rack units. Meanwhile, his prized outboard gear includes a Neve eight-channel BCM sidecar (often driving its preamps to add distortion), and Chandler TG Channel MKII and LTD-1 preamp/EQs.
But unlike his drum treatments, which optimize the full frequency spectrum, Taylor always shelves vocals. The exact recipe per vocal depends on whether it's a lead versus background part, has lyrics or not, and is soaked in reverb or is on the drier side.