Pond – How To Turn Your Toilet Into A Vocal Booth
Written by Kiel Egging on 22nd February, 2012
If you’re needing a new place to get the best out of your recordings, Jay Watson recommends you try recording vocals in the toilet.
That’s exactly what he and his Pond bandmates did when they put together their soon-to-be-released new record Beard Wives Denim at a friend’s farmhouse in rural Western Australia.
The place was so small that the toilet had to be transformed into the vocal booth – and the children’s bedroom became the band room.
And according to Watson, both of them served their purpose and delivered some pleasing results.
“Bathrooms sound like an old sound recording studio – there’s no flatback echo,” he said. “If you want to get cool, reverberated sounds go for the bathroom or the toilet, and put a mic in the toilet bowl.”
“Next time you’re in a bathroom, sing Elvis’ Blue Suede Shoes and you’ll see what I mean.”
Watson insists that laying down vocals for the record wasn’t a smelly experience either – because as far as he can recall, most of the band did their business elsewhere.
“Most people did their Number 2’s in the townhouse… I don’t remember too much to be honest, we were only there for a week and it was in 2010.”
Yep, Beard Wives Denim was recorded around two years ago – with Watson claiming ‘silly things’ has resulted in the long gap between downing tools in the townhouse and releasing the album.
However, it has also earned them a record which the band is somewhat proud to have.
“I read somewhere the longest time it took The Beatles from recording their final note to the album hitting the shelves was two months,” he said.
“It took us a year and a half, so we flogged them there.”
Watson describes Beards Wives Denim as Pond’s most mature-sounding record yet – with plenty of classic rock homages in there.
“Our earlier stuff was pretty silly… we just wanted to make crazy fucked up lo fi noise,” he said.
“Then we started to write pop songs with the last album; now this is more classic rock n’ roll stuff.”
It’s also an album which Watson is proud of because they were able to knock it out almost as quickly as an Australian Idol winner – without skimping on the quality.
“We did 12 songs in a week and it was super-intense cause most bands take years to do their albums,” he said.
“It was like from 10 in the morning to 4 in the morning every day – and it created so many strange and blissful things in our state of mind.”
“We were pretty frazzled by the end of it, but we came out with an album at the end. A week’s worth of frazzle is worth an album.”
Beard Wives Denim is out Friday, March 2 through Modular. Pond are planning to tour the record around Australia in April. You can download their new single Moth Wings by clicking on the widget below.
