On Sunday 13th March 2022, we took the road to Mayenne (France) to give birth to something quite important. For many months now, Damien and I have tagged along with Audrey, Vankou and Hugo in the maturation of their second album. In Laval, we have an appointment with the obstetrician of this new record: Amaury Sauvé. And it’s funny sometimes how dates coincide. You can believe it or not, but it’s still a bit stunning for us to think that two years ago exactly, those lovely humans from Annabel Lee had to abort their tour (for the first album) and go back home with a sad feeling of dismay. Then this Sunday we all went the other direction to come and record an album. Today it’s spring.

I know that recording this new album with Amaury is a real shift for Annabel Lee. The guy has an incredible work method that is impossible to summarize in a few lines. It forced the band to approach this session in a different way. There are more steps, more accuracy and above all a long list of homeworks at the end of the pre-production. The band preyed on the long forced break (due to the pandemic) to gather and compose, then everything accelerated after their first visit to the studio in January. Suddenly there were only 5-6 weeks left to fix things, work to ensure what was already quite good, find the missing bits, all this with daily life throwing a spanner in the works at the same time.

If you’re not a musician yourself, some of the conversations in the studio may seem a bit obscure. It goes about Fuzz, Boost, Pettyjohn, sustain, halftones that sometimes you can feel, sometimes can’t even hear at all. They are pulling the strings, changing the drumheads, reshaping the tempo maps. Your ears buzz a bit and your heart whirrs a lot because you don’t necessarily need to understand everything to be overwhelmed by the exultation of collective creation.

During the whole session, we are squeezed up together 24/7 (but it’s fine). It’s intense because we’re there to work, yet it feels like a holiday camp. And the place is pleasant. What a treat to have a huge live room bathed in sunlight and windows in the control room. This configuration is also very useful to keep visual contact between all the band members and the sound engineer. Essential to get the music grooving. Some of the tracks have already been played on stage, others are only a few weeks old, but they all sound great put together because they reflect the cohesion of the band.

I could spend hours telling you about the recording of each track, and each person present will tell it differently. Not to mention that sometimes brains tend to remember the hard stuff. There were some with the clock constantly ticking, tiredness and everyone’s sensitivity.  There were also plenty of happy accidents, fortunately, all of which will be fixed on a record (but you’ll have to wait quite some time to hear that). This and lots of the other stuff were captured by my camera and audio recorder. Something will surely come out of it, even if it’s still blurry in my mind at the moment.

It’s a lot about feelings difficult to put into words but there are also very concrete things that we can list:

Annabel Lee used 4 sets of strings, changed the drumheads two times and killed 13 pairs of sticks. 10 tracks were recorded and edited in 10 days (including the installation, so more like 9, and the reamps, so more like 8, and the arrangements, so… well, anyway) and then on the day off we also found the time to not rest and shoot a video. We drove 588 KM back and forth. In one morning everyone agreed on a photo suggested by Audrey for the cover and Damien did the layout in the wake (never seen before). We had the first barbecue of 2022 and ate at least 19 baguettes. As for the number of beers, that will remain a manufacturing secret.

– m.