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10:41 · 1,870 words of transcript · watch on YouTube
- The band assembled across three places, with Casablancas meeting one member at school in New York, another at a boarding school in Switzerland, and two more back in New York.
▶ 00:02:15
- They locked themselves in a rehearsal studio in 1998 and came out six months later, and a club booking agent became their manager and sent the demo out.
▶ 00:02:29
- Rough Trade in the UK signed them first and released the three-track EP, which set off a bidding war among American labels.
▶ 00:02:48
- The press ran ahead of the music, with a magazine cover before they had an album out, and the band's own objection was that nobody had heard them yet.
▶ 00:03:05
- The first sessions, with Pixies producer Gil Norton, were scrapped entirely because the band thought the results sounded too clean and pretentious.
▶ 00:04:15
- On the rerecording Casablancas made up words on the spot and insisted most songs be cut once, to keep the live feel.
▶ 00:04:34
- Their label thought the new producer was ending their career, hearing a record that was fuzzy, under-produced and with the vocal buried, which is exactly what the band wanted.
▶ 00:04:50
- The US release hit two snags, a song swapped out as insensitive after 11 September, and a sleeve considered too risque for American shops, replaced by an image of particle tracks in a bubble chamber.
▶ 00:05:11
- By the time of Angles the members would not be in the same room, with Casablancas largely absent from writing and mailing his parts in.
▶ 00:07:03
- The diagnosis is context rather than quality: they have not made a bad album, but everything is measured against a debut whose expectations could not be met, and they were eclipsed by the bands they made room for.
▶ 00:08:05