Those of you who kept up with The Indie Handbook during Dutch Week may remember my post about the IN A CABIN WITH international recording project. If you don’t remember, well, here it is again. And of course you can find a more official description on the IN A CABIN WITH official website.
And now that you’re up to speed on the project, a new album was recorded in January and just released! I downloaded it today (because there’s a free download available!) and have been simultaneously listening and reading the collaboration’s blog. This particular project’s name is We’ll Make It Right and is made up of several Dutch musicians I’ve never heard of (because let’s be honest, the Dutch musicians I know are mostly the ones we covered during Dutch Week). The instrumentation, as described on the blog, is “amongst arp, vibes, piano, banjo, and flute the strange duck in the bite!” I’m not sure what it means to be the strange duck in the bite, but I’m pretty sure by listening that it’s a good thing. On a whole, the collaboration is quite fantastic.
Within the first five seconds of the first track, “Stop Trying So Hard,” I couldn’t help thinking of Sondre Lerche, along the lines of “Everyone’s Rooting Just For You”. Dominant chords and flute motifs bring a definite jazz feel to this track as well as to others, the most notable being the sassy “Just Like A Man.” If I could swing dance, I would. Eric can. Songs like “It Ain’t All Good, “For The Sleeping,” and “We’ll Make It Bright” are incredibly lovely and sad, and the end of “For The Sleeping” is especially ethereal. If any of you care about my own personal favorite track (I know, I’m shameless), I think for now it is “Some Day,” which is one of the most playful and moving (literally, not emotionally) songs on the album; however, as with most truly great albums, my favorite is likely to change with more listens.
Reading the blog alongside of listening has added, I think, a new dimension to my comprehending the collaboration as a whole. This makes sense, as a person’s understanding of an artwork can only increase with their understanding of the artist and the environment under which the art was created. Can you appreciate Shostakovich without a cognizant acknowledgement of his life in Soviet Russia? Sure. But this acknowledgement will take you much deeper into his music than a surface-level listen or chord analysis. So, I’d like to share a few thoughts I have upon reading the IN A CABIN WITH We’ll Make It Right blog.
The bloggers in the band not only sleep in one hotel room, but “we all sleep in 1 big 8-person bed, and DJ Extraa talks in his sleep. He shouted: ‘Which asshole does this!’. Later on he murmered: ‘Slackers.'” This is so funny and so imaginably difficult at the same time! It puts a whole new spin on the second track, “My Best Friend”– “when you bother me/i’ll bother you/and we’ll both know/i wanna make you my best friend.” They describe their overall feeling as “one of intense, vulnerable sweet people spending day and night in a chalet. We show each other movies, play each other songs we’ve made or songs by others, have dinner together, sleep together…Definitely not rock’n’roll!” I don’t know, I guess they’re right. Maybe it isn’t particularly rock’n’roll. Later they admit they’ve pretty much lost touch with reality. That’s natural, I guess! But don’t you freaking love it? It’s so artistic and wonderful, and the effect it has on their music is inimitable. “Sweet with balls,” they call it. Brilliant.
My favorite is their second-to-last blog post; the implications of this excerpt are fascinating:
“Each person in the band contributed several scetches for a song. And we wanted everybody to at least make 1 song out 1 of their scetches, and we’ve acheived that. So everyone ‘s got his “own” song now, except for Extraa. We will do his tomorrow.”
I think the reason this interests me so much is that despite everyone having their own song, and despite an earlier post saying the only music they all liked was Phoenix’s, all the songs on the album flow beautifully. There is a definite and distinct sound to this collaboration, which can only come, I suppose, from spending every waking hour together in a tiny hotel room, and perhaps drinking lots of whiskey, and pushing through all those annoying idiosyncrasies that literally every person has, and knowing in the end, you have to produce, and whatever you produce has to be beautiful and it has to be art.
And it is beautiful, and it is art. So I would say that In A Cabin With We’ll Make It Right is an enormous success.
I can’t embed it, so watch this video.
The Indie Handbook 
Listen to (and perhaps review) Regina’s two new singles – “Laughing With” and “Eet”. You won’t regret it.
P.S. Her new album hits the ground on the 23rd of this month, though being the omniscient indies you two are, I’m sure you know that already.
We did know! We are giving ourselves indie points for it, and I guess you can have some too, since you knew, also. I’ll talk to Eric about it–he is the big Regina Spektor fan. I like her buuuut am not quite as devoted. Thanks, Kate!!
K
NPR will be streaming Regina’s new album starting 18 June. I’ll try to get a review up before the release date. I’ll also try to post on God Help the Girl before it comes out that day as well.