Fences

ALBUM BIO

“I felt empowered by other people,” says Christopher Mansfield, ahead of the release of Bright Soil, his new full-length album under the Fences moniker. “I didn’t feel alone. I felt happy.”

The LP, due September 15th, spotlights not only a time of monumental changes in the artist’s life but perhaps his most cohesive album to date. That’s no small feat given that Mansfield says that the material comes not from a specific period of time but a broader window that ultimately allowed him to pick and choose songs that for one reason or another hadn’t found a home on a recording project.

“Often times you’ll write 30 songs for a 10 song album,” he says, “so there’s a handful of things that didn’t make past records—I changed a few words or changed arrangements. But then ‘Bright Soil’ is something I wrote a few days before we started recording. It was less of a linear story, less of a portrait of exactly where I am in my life and more about a feeling. I went through and found these old songs that would fit with the new ones and it’s almost like that’s a statement of time—you can write something without knowing it’s for a specific album that hasn’t happened for four or five years.”

He adds, “With Failure Sculptures it was so it was so literal and it felt depressingly personal. With ­Bright Soil I wanted to feel freer and happier—people may think that sounds funny when they hear the album but that’s where I was at.”

For the album Mansfield assembled what he refers to as his “dream band” with lifelong friend Felix Pastorius (son of Jaco Pastorius) on bass and Jeremiah Green (Modest Mouse) on drums. (Mansfield’s wife, Maxine, also appears.)

“I just wanted it to sound cohesive,” he says. “With my previous full-length albums I’d recorded them in different states with different producers, different drummers, different everything. For this, we had a room for a specific amount of time. That’s it. It was like, ‘Lock the door and don’t kill each other.’”

He adds, “I wanted to get people whose sound I loved so that if I wanted to, I could just leave and I could trust that they’d do their best. Jeremiah has a great natural flow to his playing and Felix is even more technically proficient than his father in some regards. I think he’s the best bass player in the world right now.” For guitar he turned to Thomas Hunter of The Heavy. “I wasn’t being greedy but wanted to get the best players—it was like picking a soccer team in school. It was a joy.”

Mansfield came in on one day and sang scratch vocals and guitar. “The next day they came in and I said, ‘Let’s paint all over this thing.’ I knew the sound would be consistent because they all have such unique voices. They’re not like traditional studio players. They’re not going to change their vibe to fit the song. They’re just going to do their thing.”

The actual recording involved a wide range of vintage gear, including mellotron, but Mansfield is less concerned about model numbers and brand names than the warmth and timbral colors that each device offers on the finished product. “Jason Soda, who co-produced with me, would have these crazy looking boxes and amps and little pianos and mics from the ‘50s and ‘60s. Jason is so excited by the gear that he knows what to use for handclaps. It’s always something crazy but it always fits. Without being dramatic, I don’t think anything we used on this album was something I’d seen before in person.”

Mansfield also became a father during the cycle for the album. “As much as you feel like you’ve geared up for it, no matter how much you’ve prepared you really have no idea what it’s actually like,” he says. “I think I was blissfully ignorant of the magnitude before. But there was this beautiful thing about my wife being around and knowing that my daughter could hear the music. All the beautiful things that you would think I would think.”

CONTACT

Jim Merlis
Big Hassle Media
jim@bighassle.com