A House We're All Living In: Creative Adult Bridge A Divide On 'Fear Of Life'

Photo: MJ Bernier

“It’s tough to stifle someone else’s creativity…”

Michael Bingham is describing sessions for Creative Adult’s new LP,‘Fear of Life’, when he trails off for a moment. With the album a couple of days away from hitting shelves, the guitarist can talk about the process safe in the knowledge that, as he puts it, they have a good thing going on right now. But that wasn’t the deal only a short while ago.

A lot of great records have been made while bands have been at each other’s throats. So many, in fact, that the relationship between interpersonal friction and creativity has become a reliable beat for hacks to hit. Creative Adult, though, have never needed a tense atmosphere to get things done in the past. Up to this point, in fact, they’ve been prolific: ‘Fear of Life’ will be their ninth release since forming in 2012, having known one another for much longer than that.

Bingham doesn’t revel in the album’s troubled genesis. He readily acknowledges it, and his part in it, but won’t mythologise it. It was unpleasant and stressful. It divided the group. It pitched close friends against each other to the point that they stopped communicating. “The benefit was awesome but it was a pretty tumultuous thing to undergo,” Bingham says.

The band - Bingham, vocalist Scott Phillips, guitarists Anthony Anzaldo and RJ Phillips, Scott’s brother, bassist Mike Fenton and drummer James Rogers - decamped to Atomic Garden in Palo Alto, near their base in San Francisco, to record with the former Comadre guitarist Jack Shirley, a close friend of Bingham’s whose recent work includes albums by Deafheaven, Loma Prieta and Punch. Once there, Bingham pushed his vision for the record hard.

From the band’s rough sketches, which were left deliberately loose to allow them to come to life in the studio, he went in search of a skyscraping guitar record that spliced their psych-influenced post-hardcore with the jangle of ‘80s indie and the bullish swagger of peak Oasis. His forceful approach bucked a collaborative trend and didn’t always find a warm welcome.

“I was the one jumping in the drivers’ seat real hard,” he says. “[Shirley] is a very good friend of mine and we had it all kinda planned out, what we wanted the album to sound like. We’ve never really had a record before where anyone would jump into the drivers’ seat, it’s always been a pretty mellow, collective style. What I really wanted to do with this record was make a whole bunch of songs that sounded the same. 

"I was being more intense about the way I wanted the songs to sound, the way I wanted the recording to sound and the way that I wanted people to play their instruments, which is new for us. This time it was more like: ‘I don’t like that. Let’s do something else.’ It wasn’t a complete annihilation of everyone’s ideas, it was just being really strict about it. The dudes in the band told me to fuck off at certain times too, you know?

“Jack and I have this really great level of communication. I think that’s why we’ve been such close friends. We’re so direct with each other. Neither of us get offended easily, neither of us are sensitive. We can just communicate so sharply. Having him around was rad for me, because I can just say: ‘Jack, I want it to sound like this.’

"And he’ll be like: ‘Are you sure man? Earlier today everyone else said they wanted it to sound like this?’ I was like: ‘Nah, don’t worry about that. I’m who’s driving this car today.’ It was cool for me because me and my best friend got to fuck around in this really nice studio. But for everyone else, they were like: ‘Does this Jack guy not like us? He’s not listening to us and all he talks to is Mike B.’ It created a weird divide.”

In the promotional materials for the LP, the band describe their initial time in the studio as an attempt to build a house while each member had a different vision for what each room should look like. Things reached a head when Phillips started in on his vocals and, with the bit between his teeth, Bingham didn’t change tack.

“I was just harshing him out so bad,” he says. “I was like: ‘Yo. You’re not doing that very good.’ I wanted him to sing like fucking Liam Gallagher, you know what I mean? I was like: ‘These songs are big and loud and crispy and you need to sing big and loud and crispy and perfect.’ He just told me to fuck off. We didn’t really talk for a long time because it was just so awkward. I was trying to impose my idea of what he was supposed to be on our record. He was like: ‘I’m going to do whatever I want to do on this. It’s my art too.’”

The bend briefly became a break when Phillips upped sticks for Grizzly Studios in Petaluma, where he recorded the album’s vocals with his brother serving as engineer. It was the equivalent of holding someone at arm’s length while they take swings at your midriff, but on this occasion it worked.

Phillips’ performance on ‘Fear of Life’ is one of its aces. He brings a brooding, almost gothic, quality to the piece as a maelstrom of guitars thrash around him. On songs like Moving Window he unfurls the most potent melodies of the band’s career, but he refuses to make it completely easy for the listener. The hooks reveal themselves slowly, emerging from the bluster of his baritone on listen two, three or four.

“It wasn’t weird [Phillips relocating] because I knew it needed to happen for our friendship,” Bingham says. “It was one of the most brutal days of my life having to sit in a recording studio and freak out because he wasn’t doing what I wanted him to do. Having to tell him: ‘You’re not doing what I want you to do.’ And having him be like: ‘I don’t know what to tell you, man.’

"That’s terrible on a friendship. That’s really, really bad. He went to that other studio and I didn’t even go. He fucking knocked it out of the park because he didn’t have a bunch of people telling him what or what not to do. He just did what he wanted to do and it was cool. I had to learn that. I wanted him to sing perfectly. I wanted him to sing like the Beatles or something, and when he didn’t I was like: ‘Oh, well it’s not good.’ You have to find value in other ways of going about it.”

‘Fear of Life’ doesn’t sound like a record conceived amid strife. It’s a driven, ambitious piece of work that foregrounds each band member at different moments. The rhythm section is unfussy but relentless, while Bingham has his wish: this is a monster of a guitar album. Much as California X’s was on ‘Nights In The Dark’, its six string worship is out in the open and the riffs are molasses thick. Phillips’ nebulous lyrics and enigmatic delivery, meanwhile, tie a bow around the package.

“The other day Jack and I went to dinner and he was like: ‘You just got me completely barred from recording any other Creative Adult material, didn’t you?’ And I was like: ‘For sure,’ Bingham laughs. “He’s an amazing person and a great engineer. That vocal day was pretty hard in particular. The way that the music was recorded, though, I couldn’t have asked for a better job to be done by anyone. I don’t want it to be misconstrued that it was bad. I had a little bit more control than other members did.”

‘Fear of Life’ isn’t quite a case of the end justifying the means. It simply isn’t as clean cut as that when you’re talking about the possibility of tearing up old friendships. “I don’t like fighting with my friends,” Bingham says. “That’s not pleasant. But I do think it was beneficial.”

'Fear of Life’ is out on August 5 through Run For Cover.

Creative Adult Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:

Thu October 13 2016 - BRIGHTON Green Door Store
Fri October 14 2016 - LONDON Moth Club
Sat October 15 2016 - CARDIFF Four Bars
Sun October 16 2016 - GLASGOW 13th Note
Mon October 17 2016 - MANCHESTER Star And Garter
Tue October 18 2016 - LEEDS Brudenell Social Club
Wed October 19 2016 - NORWICH Owl Sanctuary
Thu October 20 2016 - NOTTINGHAM Rock City Basement

Click here to compare & buy Creative Adult Tickets at Stereoboard.com.

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