Interview Enough is enough: how do musicians know when an album is finished?

Felix White: Knowing when a record is finished can often be a lot more challenging than you would otherwise imagine. When you have put every waking minute of a number of years into conceiving, scrapping, re-approaching and re-writing a piece of music, the process itself can become so all-consuming that you almost don’t know how to let go of it. In some ways we are lucky in the Maccabees, in that there are a few writers and a lot of detail in the early stages of writing. Though that can mean that it takes a frustratingly long time for ideas to form with a sense of identity and consensus, it does mean that when we’ve got to the end, we know we’ve explored most options.

I remember reading [Radiohead’s] Ed O’Brien say in the ‘Kid A’ diaries that they’d just finished a song that they had been trying out in so many painstaking guises over a year - and it sounded almost exactly like it did in the first place. That kind of rung true. Sometimes it’s done before you know it, you just have to exhaust the other possibilities in order to get back to where you had started.

On our last record we were keen to avoid the kind of trap we had walked into a bit in the past, in that finishing it became about layering until we couldn’t layer any more. Almost as a last minute self-conscious reaction. We were keen for ‘Marks To Prove It’ to feel exposed where it needed to, even if that was despite some of our learned techniques of the past. Something felt honest about that, and it has helped the music translate as the complete authentic thing when playing live this year, too.

Jamie Hince: You run out of time! No, good question…

Alison Mosshart: When it’s mastered. There are so many things that can change with mixing. It’s such a laborious process, and it goes on for so long. You think with songs… ‘ooo we could do this a bit differently,’ or ‘we could cut this or that’. Til it’s mastered.. pfft, to me, it just seems like all the clothes are on it. When it’s glued, and sealed and sent away, that’s how you know it’s done. That’s a cool moment.

Jamie: It’s difficult to know, actually, when you’re producing your own record. We keep rewriting our records – I mean, I do. I keep rewriting and recording them until I’m absolutely happy with them. We chose a label that would let us do that. She normally tells me when a record is finished. ‘No it’s not!’

Alison: Yes it is!

Jamie: Nope!

Alison: Step away.

Early on in the process of writing an album, I begin to put tracks into order, and I understand that the songs are still very young. They will likely change, but it helps to get my head around what will eventually be a complete work. I think I know when the album is finished when, sort of like the keystone of an arch, removing any song or changing the order makes the entire album fall down. I find that as I spend time with that track, ordering over the period of time during which I’m making the album, I become increasingly sensitive to the fragility of the set; to its components and their order. I’ve learned that I can tell I’m close when I approach space of maximum sensitivity to change of tracks - that usually means that the narrative is well formed and complete.

Daniel Falvey: This is quite a relevant question to us, because we do find it very difficult to know when to say an album is done. Anyone who has worked with us on that process can probably attest to that. In fact, we’d actually mastered ‘Fall Forever’ and Jess [Weiss] asked if she could replace a word for the revision. Even when an album has been mastered, which is usually the very definite cut-off point, we seem to find a way to push it.

I’ve heard it said that you never finish an album - you just run out of time, or money. That has helped me to come to terms with that end process, that sooner or later, whether you like it or not, it has to be done. At the start of the process of making an album, it can feel overwhelming. When you are halfway through it feels even bigger. Quickly studio days get eaten up and before you know it you’re down to the wire. Right at the end of ‘Fall Forever’ we did three all-nighters in a row, sleeping for a few hours in the morning, to get it all done. Even then, it did feel like we could have easily done with another week!

Once an album is finished and people start listening to it, it almost doesn’t become yours anymore, it’s handed over to the listener and from my experience it’s often the little mistakes and accidents in an album that can help to make an album really special to a listener. For me, an album is a time capsule and document of where the artist is at that moment. That’s a special thing that I don’t think should be played with.

I try not to overthink it. If I feel as though I’ve said everything I want to say with the body of songs I’ve constructed, then I go ahead and record the album, and I don’t look back. Once that baby is released into the world, it’s the world’s baby. It doesn’t belong to you anymore, and out of respect for this creation that was birthed and liberated, I think it’s an artist’s job to get out of the way, and let it unfold and evolve in the hands of others, rather than trying to reclaim and revise. I’d rather see those ideas end up in a new form on the next record instead.

Finishing a record can be tricky for me. There’s always something that could be arranged better, or played better, or mixed better… But at some point you just have to stop. Deadlines, whether label or self imposed, are good for that reason. In a vacuum I could see myself reworking a record forever. But then you really have to throw it out there; show it to people you trust and hear out their opinions about it. At that point, you’ve heard the record one hundred thousand times and you’re not hearing it like a human anymore, you’re hearing it as an analyst, picking apart every aspect. You have to step away and let it be what it is.

A new level of development can come into the live performances, too. If you’re playing and arranging all the parts on the record, bringing a live band into the mix will develop the sound. There are a handful of my songs that I feel my live band plays way better than the recorded version. That’s exciting, though sometimes it can be frustrating that you didn’t commit their ideas to tape. You could record a live version and have both. So yeah, step away from the record and let it be what it is. Leave some minor fuck-ups in there, too. They’re fun and become easter eggs for repeat listening. It’s better to step away from the record while it’s still sounding like a group of humans made it. Unless you’re making electronic music, I guess… then make it sound like robots made it!

I don’t mind that big-time musicians have the ability to go back and retroactively tweak their songs online. At first it seemed like a pretty shocking idea but I started thinking about all the albums that have been remixed, remastered, or repackaged (with or without the artist’s consent) over the years and it seems fair that the creators themselves should have the option do the same. While I initially wanted to say there is a real danger to leaving that door open, to invite ephemerality to a thing that used to be permanent; it is also kind of beautiful to have streamed, recorded music be as dynamic as any other thing in the world. To me it is a timely reminder that most links online will be inactive within seven years and any digital streaming service can remove a song at a moment’s notice. So in that kind of digital climate why not give a band the ability to manipulate their own work since everyone else seems to be able to already.

That being said, I’m pretty sure I want to stay as far away as possible from imagining I could change a record once it has been pressed. My process involves zooming in on little sounds and over the course of a year deciding which imperfections distract from the sonic world I want to create and which actually help build it. There are so many micro decisions of instruments to make softer or louder or certain words to enunciate slightly differently but at the end of the day I know my record is done when I can be transported to a place and not get pulled out of it until the last note has faded out. Usually by that point in the process I’m a lot more interested in looking forward to the next idea instead of backwards, editing the old thoughts.

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