Katherine Von Ancken Photo
The Tines.
“Collarbone,” the lead single from the latest album by the New Haven-based band The Tines, starts with a simple, steady drumbeat, a pulsing bass, a single guitar chord. It’s a sound that’s taking its time, leaving plenty of space. Having established the atmosphere, the instruments get down to work. The guitar fleshes out its ideas. The bass answers with a melody of its own. A keyboard wriggles in from a corner of the musical space. The drums add their own accents. An echoing voice then takes its place within the music. “Chin clamping down on collarbone / talking on the phone / talking on the phone,” it sings. “With the one who leaves you prone / makes you feel so known / makes you feel so known.”
The easy, democratic flair of “Collarbone” is emblematic of the entire album — titled The Tines, and set to be released on Aug. 26 (find it on Bandcamp here) — which finds the quartet of S.G. Carlson on guitar, vocals, and keyboards, Ilya Gitelman on lead guitars, Sean Koravo on bass, and J Thompson on drums and percussion sounding both as simpatico and as loose and free as they’ve ever sounded, even as they continue to deliver the intelligent and emotional indie rock that has made the members as both a unit and as individuals an integral part of New Haven’s music scene.
Creating the album took about a year and a half, which meant that it was a chance for Carlson to grow as a songwriter, musician, and recording engineer all at once — while adjusting to the shifting conditions imposed by the pandemic.
“This was a very different way for me to approach the recording process,” he said. In the past, Carlson’s band projects (including with The Tines) had followed a more traditional route to making an album: first write the songs, then rehearse them with the band, then go into a studio and record all of it at once, within a couple weeks.
This time around, Carlson found himself with a studio — Sans Serif Recording, located on Chapel Street — which meant the need to churn out recordings in a small period of time was relaxed. Also, “we didn’t have anything pre-written,” Carlson said. “We would all come up with a song. We would agree on an arrangement, and we would record it the next day. So we would book slots two days at a time. The first day, we were going to show up and finalize the arrangement. The next day, we were going to record it immediately — no time to overthink things.” And “instead of being in the same stew, each song gets its own special attention.”
That meant greater sonic diversity from song to song on the album. It also meant that the recordings reflected what Carlson and the band members happened to be listening to at the time of recording. “You can definitely tell in the album where I was going through a Nick Drake phase last winter,” Carlson said with a laugh. Other band members followed an idea from the band Guided by Voices, dictating that if music was turning out too pretty, you should put something ugly in the middle of it, and vice versa.
In general, Carlson said, “first thought, best thought’ was the guiding principle in making this.”
Carlson found some liberation in moving through each song relatively quickly. “As far as production technique goes, I believe the more time you spend on something, the less likely you are to like it,” he said. “If you can just whip through it and get a bunch of stuff down in one day, then the next day, when you hear it, you think ‘oh cool, I made some interesting decisions that day.’ ” By contrast, “if you mull something over for a year and a half, you might not be able to see things that could be different about it, and it’s going to bug you forever.”
The four members of the band played their core parts together live to capture a certain feel and then did a few overdubs. “It’s my favorite way to do things now,” he said, for the energy it brings. “I feel like if you have little mistakes, and the time pushes and pulls, it just feels a little more dangerous. It feels a little more rock ‘n’ roll, which I like.”
Carlson also learned a lot about how he liked to record music, from slimming down how many microphones he used to capture sound, “giving myself more rules,” and “maybe just being more relaxed about the outcome,” he said with a laugh. He also learned more about “using the studio as a production tool.” They experimented with sending vocals through guitar amps and pedals. They also used the building — particularly a big unused office space that got used as a reverb chamber.
Most of all, though, Carlson learned to appreciate even more that his bandmates are “a unique group of players. Everyone says that about their band, but Ilya plays guitar like himself. He doesn’t sound like anyone else, and he never has. Sean plays Paul McCartney lead bass — ultra-melodic. He doesn’t play anything you’re expecting.” And “I’ve always said that I couldn’t be in a band with a drummer who wasn’t better than me, and they” — J Thompson — “are, for sure. Amazing player and amazing bandmate, always on top of everything.”
Carlson wrote the initial words, lead melodies, and harmonic structures for the songs, but “once we were able to get into a room together, everyone’s fingerprints got all over it,” he said, to the point that it felt like “a completely different song. The sound of the band is the sound of these very specific pieces. The studio stuff helped a lot, but it’s the sum of the players that are involved that gives it the sound.”
That got reflected in the band’s name change over time — from S.G. Carlson, to S.G. Carlson and the Tines, to just the Tines. Carlson also enlisted several guest musicians, from MorganEve Swain on strings to Erik Elligers and Dylan McDonnell on clarinet and flute.
At the time, Carlson recalled a little self-congratulation in having started a band and recorded music during the pandemic. As society reopened, however, he realized he wasn’t alone. “Every band is new, and everyone who was in a different band is doing something new now. Everyone made a pandemic record. The entire world did what I thought was so unique.”
Carlson also noticed an explosion of “younger bands,” he said. “Normally they might show up one at a time … and then when the pandemic, no one could play shows for two years, and then when you could, the floodgates opened and all of these bands have already arrived, just online.”
“I’ve got a lot of new names to learn,” he added. “A lot of people to meet. It’s refreshing to have a lot of new stuff going on.”
The flurry of activity has been good for Sans Serif, which is now booked about two months in advance for recording dates and has steady mixing and mastering work. The studio Carlson started at “the worst possible time,” close to the beginning of the pandemic, “seems like it’s worked, so I can expand a bit.” He’s moving the studio into a larger space in the same building — just another way the music keeps growing.
The Tines comes out on Aug. 26 on all platforms.