Column: The Fallacy of Pretty, Pretty Production

By Nicole Pope


After hearing new singles from Islands and Tapes N Tapes, I’m apprehensive. Already I fear they’ll be added to the heap of bands that had their eye on the prize and left with honorable mention. Why? Both songs left me feeling like I ate too much bread before my meal: all yummy filler, yet surprisingly little substance.

I’m talking about production here.

The Shins. Modest Mouse. Blonde Redhead. Interpol. Sigur Ros. One could even make a case for The Arcade Fire.

All have embraced a markedly prettier production on their recent albums, yet have made one of their weakest (or in many cases, hands-down weakest) albums yet.

What’s going on here?

Is it simply that as bands increase in popularity they get more money, and so like all those anemic Hollywood blockbusters, pile that dough into aesthetics?

Or that obsessing over the production leads artists to overlook the essentials of the craft?

Or that the overproduction is an attempt to bolster skeletal song writing?

Is it misguided or misguiding producers?

Attempts to please a newly demanding record label?

Attempts at grandeur that fall flat?

Or is it just that the quality of the band’s current output doesn’t justify all the histrionics?

Make no mistake, a better sounding song does not necessarily a weak song make. Look at The Flaming Lips’ The Soft Bulletin, maybe the most produced album ever. Or on a lesser scale, an album like Blonde Redhead’s Misery is a Butterfly. Here the band moved toward a glossier sound, though the production complemented its meandering sparseness (I’ve heard listening to the album compared to watching a French film.) Another more recent example: Iron & Wine’s The Shepherd’s Dog. This is perhaps the most extreme sonic shift, as we go from crackling tracks like “The Sea and the Rhythm” to the multi-layered, reverb-heavy “Carousel.” And yet, the album is a resounding success.

Is this simply the case of “I fell in love with The Shins because of two-minute tracks like ‘Girl Inform Me,’ and now they’re peddling Zunes with their oversexed, overblown new singles”? (I’m unfairly knifing “Sleeping Lessons” here, which is admittedly the best song on the album. But maybe that only proves my point.)

Is it just that some bands are better at making the transition from lo-fi to pretty, pretty production?

Maybe I’m being petulant here, but why do they have to make the transition?