Let's say it's, oh, 1996.
And let's say there's a punk band, a very good one, one that's done all the right things – written killer songs, developed an interesting personality to set it apart, toured the underground circuit endlessly while releasing strong albums on small, cred-heavy labels.
Now, let's say that after, oh, four full-lengths (and countless singles and splits) of incrementally more sophisticated and approachable material, this band puts out the record that anyone paying attention could've seen was coming: the Breakthrough Album, the one with the big production values and the far more radio-ready tunes.
In 1996, the Breakthrough Album is a risky move. Whether or not it lives up to its name and actually breaks through, any punk band that brings something even vaguely mainstream-friendly to the marketplace can count on alienating a considerable, "sellout!"-chanting chunk of its audience, perhaps permanently. That's just the way it is these days; ironically enough, punk has rules.
Back in the present, on the other hand, the Breakthrough Album is a less perilous endeavor. By now, the lines between punk rock and everything else have been crossed so often that they're barely distinguishable in places, with results both good (a more open-minded scene) and bad (Hawthorne Heights). And if you're not a purist, one of the more interesting side effects of this lessening of dogma is watching bands with the potential and motivation to expose themselves to a wider audience, do so.
Still, those bands have gotta feel a little weird when it becomes apparent that they're taking that step.
"There was a point during recording," concedes Alkaline Trio drummer Derek Grant. "I had just finished my drums … and I thought, 'What am I doing? Is this the kind of album I want to be making right now? Is this too much?'
"I was pretty uncertain as to whether it would work or not, but as soon as I heard it, I knew it was the right thing."
Grant is talking about the sessions for
Crimson, the fifth and most polished and readily accessible CD from the famously dark-hearted group. Though previous outings have dabbled in hooky mid-tempo anthems and occasional near-balladry, the Chicago-bred Alkaline Trio is best known, and best loved, for blazing, impeccably tailored pop-punk paeans to the things that grow in the shadowed back corners of the soul; brief, poetic indulgences in the black hours between heartbreak and hangover.
While Crimson boasts more of the same – it still seems impossible for singer-songwriters Matt Skiba and Dan Andriano to write a bad chorus or hit a wrong harmony-vocal line – it's rendered with new slickness, and shares space with new songs and sounds that couldn't have appeared on blasts like 1998's raw-wound Goddamnit! or even the last record, '03's elegantly fatalistic Good Mourning. Roughly half of Crimson is dedicated to longer songs, slower speeds, creepy piano lines, sheets of synths and baroque New Wave touches, mostly delivered via unabashedly modern rock arrangements.
"During the songwriting process we were pulling out all the stops, whatever felt good, however crazy the arrangement, however indulgent it might've seemed, we just rolled with it," says Grant. "We knew this time … we felt like having the benefit of a producer being able to tell us whether something was too much, from an outsider's point of view."
The producer in question is Jerry Finn, who worked with Green Day, Rancid and others before helming Blink-182's smash Enema of The State and Morrissey's comeback disc You Are The Quarry. Longtime Alkaline Trio fans who decide Crimson's multilayered shimmer is too pandering for their tastes will undoubtedly blame Finn, a man with a reputation for turning little punk acts into arena-sized name attractions. (The producer also worked on Good Mourning, and that release's thick production inspired some qualms among the punker-than-thou.) But according to Grant, who joined the band shortly after 2001's high water mark From Here to Infirmary, Skiba and Andriano have been harboring ambitious studio ideas for quite a while.
"Even as far back as when [original drummer] Glenn Porter was in the band, they'd recorded some stuff that had some keyboards on it," he says. "Infirmary has some piano on it."
Grant chalks up Crimson's varied, textured sound to a mix of songwriting evolution and finally having the budget and time to allow experimenting with takes and overdubs that might or might not make the final cut.
"When we got around to doing Good Mourning, we realized the songs weren't necessarily our three-chord power-pop songs, and that some of them would benefit from more instrumentation," says the drummer. "But we didn't have a whole lot of time to spend on anything. This time around, a lot of the songs were written with that stuff in mind. Thankfully, we had the time to play around with it and see what worked best. But the ideas were always there."
Since it's 2005, and the transition from Warped Tour favorites to FM-radio Top Five at Five placeholders has never been easier for bands with the chops and the drive, the odds are pretty good that Crimson will lead Alkaline Trio up the path taken by AFI, Jimmy Eat World, Coheed & Cambria and a dozen others. (To this fan, several of the album's more mainstream-friendly tracks seem awkward, but the first single, "Time to Waste," is a nearly perfect contender.) The record also fulfills the band's contract with sort-of-independent label Vagrant, and a subsequent move to a major would surprise no one.
For now, however, Grant's just happy to be done with the recording process, and looking forward to going on tour again; he'd rather look down the literal road than the figurative one.
"Getting the record done and getting it out, we've had tunnel vision," he says. "Thinking beyond that is a little unnecessary at this point. Whatever happens is going to be for the well-being of the band. It's going to be on our terms, and it's going to be for the better."
scott.harrell@weeklyplanet.com
This article appears in Jun 29 – Jul 5, 2005.
