Lol Tolhurst, Budgie and Jacknife Lee take on modern Los Angeles
No member of The Cure or Siouxsie and the Banshees needs to prove anything to the music world. As a foundational part of the post-punk and goth-rock scenes, both acts have recorded legendary music that has since left a massive impact on future artists looking to get in touch with the darker side of music. After years of playing into the emotional side of the genre, both Lol Tolhurst and Budgie are taking a closer look at what music means to them.
Becoming close friends while on tour in their golden ages, both drummers remained friends and even started the podcast Curious Creatures as of late. Coming together for an album with producer Jackknife Lee, Los Angeles reflects what the ‘City of Angels’ is about outside of the glamour.
When taken together, Los Angeles is a bold depiction of what makes the city so alluring. Having been a resident for years, Tolhurst would say that the album is an extension of what made the area so engaging, telling Far Out, “Los Angeles is my home and has been for 30 years. With its glitz and grime for better or worse, I love the place that changed my life’s trajectory.”
As such, the album flows a unique concept album, depicting various guest stars expressing what the idea of the city means to them. While the album works to tell a story of the city, it wasn’t as linear going in.
According to Tolhurst, the trio did not intend to make a concept album, but given the collaboration between its various guest stars, they ended up creating a throughline between each of the songs. As Tolhurst describes: “I don’t think we built the concept as a plan. It evolved more naturally. As the music was finished, we gave each of our singers free rein to interpret the music through the lens of the world that we found ourselves in during the pandemic, and so the theme of Los Angeles evolved from there. As always, if things happen in the studio, or in art generally, they are always more authentic.”
Rather than coming in with a set idea, the trio would rely on each member adding their own layers to the sonic journey. When working with artists like James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem, Lee would go on to say that they presented the frontman with a particular groove and backing track to which he would write the melody of the song. Spread across each track with an assortment of guest stars, the album benefits from every performer putting their stamp on the aesthetic, not all that dissimilar from what Tolhurst’s former bandmate Robert Smith had done in his contribution to Gorillaz’s Song Machine series.
That said, every musician had their unique way of working off the group. Coming from entirely different backgrounds, Lee opened up about a handful of artists contributing to only select portions of their respective tracks. When working on the song ‘Uh Oh’ with Arrow de Wilde and Mark Bowen of Idles, Lee explained that only a few sections connected with the group, so they elected to leave bits of the song completely instrumental. Though Idles frontman Joe Talbot was planned to appear on the album, his parts would ultimately be scrapped when he had to withdraw for personal reasons.
The different approaches also extended to the type of musicians the group worked with. When contributing different beats to the Lonnie Holley track ‘Bodies’, Lee said Holley thrived out of working in a freeform style and capturing a moment in time. He explained: “There is no warming up. You play him the music and start recording. I’ve been working this way with people for years, capturing them improvising from the first listen and not worrying about where it’s going; record everything, sift and edit later. It is the way I try to record everyone that comes to the studio. Lonnie doesn’t know any other way of doing it. He doesn’t need any other way. He dives in and flows. It’s important to try and document where people are before thinking over dominates instinct.”
That musical freedom is best exemplified on ‘We Got To Move’, featuring a guest performance by Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock. Recalling the experience, Lee would say that working on the final track was the equivalent of figuring out a puzzle: “Isaac’s vocal took a while because the song was very long and didn’t have a typical song structure to it,” he said. “The music that Isaac is singing over is not the music that he wrote his vocal to. Everything is changeable. Everything is a building block and can be reconfigured. This way felt the best. It was a puzzle that took a long time to solve.”
Each of those unique approaches to production gives the album a world of its own. Even though it’s easy to pick out the psychedelic influences from Primal Scream on Bobby Gillespie’s track ‘This Is What It Is (To Be Free)’, it serves to paint a picture of both the flash and the loneliness that comes with being in Los Angeles.
When coming up as a member of Siouxsie and the Banshees, Budgie recalled having a specific image of what LA should be. Upon coming over to see the luxurious side of life for the first time, he recounted just how much is left to the imagination, including running into several homeless people just off of the main roads.
Beyond the vocalists, the group’s instrumentals are the key to creating the cold atmosphere of the tunes. Rather than come in with a completed instrumental, much of the backing tracks were made from Tolhurst or Budgie working off each other, laying down a bass line or basic groove and capturing different moments in real-time.
The clearest example of working outside their usual limitations, however, was their songs with The Edge. Rather than send over the traditional delayed guitar backing tracks that the U2 guitarist was known for, Lee was sent a minimal arrangement, stating in a press release: “He was doing some pretty radical stuff even then, and he said yes straight away. I was expecting him to send us something that was Edge-like and heavily FX’d, but he just sent us an acoustic guitar through, so I did the noise later. He was great with it and really helpful.”
This experimental side of the project also benefited from Tolhurst and Budgie returning to their roots as players. When remixing the album, the pair recalled listening back to albums like Pornography and Seventeen Seconds to find the right mood that the music needed.
Even though it might be easy to rest on one’s laurels after this long in the game, both Tolhurst and Budgie have gotten in touch with what made their previous records so captivating both back then and now. And as all classic artists of their calibre would know, if you want to build a good track, always start with the drums first.
