News

Gary Jarman talks new Cribs album: “Everything has to be right”

The Jarman brothers are back, this time with a ‘pop’ album that has Ric Ocasek behind the desk.

19th January 2015

Listen to The Cribs’ ‘An Ivory Hand’, plus see details of their new LP ‘For All My Sisters’. Below, the band give DIY an insight into what to expect.

Gary Jarman likes to pay attention to detail. With the recording for their upcoming sixth album, their first for major label Sony RED, now all complete, the band – completed by his brothers Ryan and Ross - are preparing its final details. This, according to Gary, is where things start to get taxing for the Wakefield trio.

“When you’re making the record you only have one thing to think about and you’re pretty consumed by it, you get a bit obsessive with it,” explains Gary, from his home in Portland, USA. “So to now have it, I’m defensive and precious about it. Everything has to be right. We’ve got to get the artwork right and we’ve got to have the right B-sides, everything that goes with it. We’ve always been idealistic like that.”

It’s no surprise that this album is being dealt with great consideration by the band, their ethos has always been thorough, especially when it comes to their creative output: “People might think that’s not the case with us - historically our records have been rough around the edges - but that was how we wanted it to be. We didn’t want things to be too perfect, we were excited by what it was before and people might not see us as idealists for that reason.”

When it came to writing and recording for the new LP, the band had a clear primary idea going forward. “I like to think that we’ve always been a pop band. When you look at bands from The Replacements, to Nirvana, to whoever, it’s always been pop music played by weirdos really. That’s always been my favourite music and we’ve always aspired to be a pop band in a conventional sense.”

From the first track previewed from the album, ‘An Ivory Hand’, it’s obvious that their direction is a more pop-orientated one; the track a swaying, 80s guitar-led single that withholds the traditional Cribs-esque tone. “Anyone who’s familiar with what we do will find it familiar. We’ve explored a lot of the things that we’ve done before. The influences pretty much remain the same, except I think that it is just a more fully realised version of what we intended to do.”

When taking a more pop-influenced aspect into consideration, the group already had a producer in mind; one who would be able to develop their conventional pop from a weird angle. “When we started making the demos we thought, let’s just send them to Ric (Ocasek) and see if he’s available. We’ve always wanted to work with him and he’s kind of a difficult guy to pin down. It was great because he was available and was really into the tracks, so we spent a lot of time talking about them.”

Famous for his work as frontman of The Cars and producer of Weezer’s ‘The Blue Album’, Ric was more than able to provide the group with just what they needed. “We spent a lot of time getting the right performance and the right guitar sounds. Ric’s role was to say, “Let’s get this changed,” “A guitar should sound like this,” “That was a good take,” and then listen to us sing. He was the guy who was a good arbiter.”

With the album now complete, Jarman is understandably feeling a little nervy in the face of the future. “I’m nervous,” he confirms. “When it comes to the time of putting it out, you start to worry about it because it ceases to be yours, it’s open. Having said that, I’ve also been very frustrated by the fact that we’ve been away for so long. It really balances it out with just how happy we are to be back and how ready we are.”

Taken from the February issue of DIY, out Friday 23rd January. The Cribs’ new album ‘For All My Sisters’ will be released on 23rd March via Sony RED.

Get tickets to watch The Cribs live now.

Tags: The Cribs, News, From The Magazine