Behind the Boards with John Congleton: Producer Talks St. Vincent, Angel Olsen, Tegan and Sara and More

Paolo Ragusa
·13 min read
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The post Behind the Boards with John Congleton: Producer Talks St. Vincent, Angel Olsen, Tegan and Sara and More appeared first on Consequence.

Behind the Boards is a series where we spotlight some of the biggest producers in the industry and dig into some of their favorite projects. Here, we sit down with John Congleton to discuss his production work with St. Vincent, The Walkmen, Tegan and Sara, and more.

When an indie band wants to level up, they work with John Congleton. The Texas-based songwriter and producer has been instrumental in helming records for some of the biggest indie artists of the last decade, from St. Vincent and Angel Olsen to The War on Drugs and David Byrne.

He’s been particularly busy in 2022, with his hands on some significant releases: Tegan and Sara’s new album Crybaby, Death Cab for Cutie’s Asphalt Meadows, and Whitney’s Spark. But one thing that Congleton’s productions all have in common is his ability to create expansive, atmospheric soundscapes out of moments of intimacy, a universe of emotions out of a few simple notes.

When artists work with Congleton, they seem to tap into a deeper space than their usual fare, without losing any of the experimental impulses that they may have. This is certainly the case for newer records like Death Cab’s Asphalt Meadows and Tegan and Sara’s Crybaby, but also for some of Congleton’s older productions, like The Walkmen’s sublime 2010 album Lisbon.

Though his resume is getting deeper by the week, Congleton is particularly excited to continue his work with Blondie. “I remember at one point, I had said to them, ‘It’s really weird to make a record with you guys, because if it wasn’t for what you and like 20 of your friends did in the mid-‘70s, there’s no way I would even be making records,’” he tells Consequence over Zoom. “Because punk rock, regardless of individual bands, the idea of punk rock was… well, it’s sort of a cliche to say this, but it saved my life.”

Congleton is certainly candid in our conversation about the many significant artists he’s worked with, but it’s fearlessness that he encourages above all. That, and a sense of community. “Just fucking be expressive, do your thing, because nobody cares,” says Congleton about the late ‘70s punk scene in New York, which is a fitting simile for his versatile work. “We’re just going to entertain our friends, they said… and they ended up entertaining the world.”

Read below for a deep dive into five standout John Congleton productions, including Tegan and Sara’s Crybaby, Bombay Bicycle Club’s Everything Else Has Gone Wrong, and Angel Olsen’s Burn Your Fire For No Witness.

Tegan and Sara – Crybaby

I’ll talk about those ladies as much as you want. I fucking adore them. Okay, so my relationship with that band was one of admiration from a long time ago. And I really, really respected that band when it was sort of not “hip” to respect that band. I could not fucking believe the amount of sexism that was exhibited towards that band in their early days in the reviews. I thought it was immensely brave of them in indie rock in the late-‘90s, early aughts to be very out as two queer twin sisters, write songs about being queer, write songs about their experience in general. I thought it was immensely brave and it was very often framed as like, either, “Isn’t this funny and cute?” Or sort of fetishization of the fact that they were gay. I thought that was fucking repellent. They wrote amazing songs, and they had a really amazing sound when they sang together.

And I really respected the fact that 10 years ago they decided, “We’re going to try to be a mainstream pop band, but we’re not going to lose any of what makes us people, we’re going to continue to sing about being queer. We’re going to continue to talk about being gay. We’re not going to water any of that down but we’re going to swing for the fences, popwise.” Now, look at what pop music is. It’s exactly that. And it even sounds like those records now, right? Like, I mean, Tegan and Sara is always 10 years ahead of every fucking thing. Right?

Anyways, so I’ve had some run-ins with them here and there on a couple projects that they sing backgrounds on, and Sara lived in LA, and we would get coffee sometimes. We always talked about working together. How it happened was, Sara sent me some demos, and I thought they were great. I expressed enthusiasm, not because I wanted to work on it, just because I thought that it sounded [like] what I liked about Tegan and Sara, but it sounded very energetic and kind of punk and very youthful. I gave her an assessment of what I thought of a couple of the songs in a really casual kind of way. And then she got with her sister and said, “Why don’t we try some songs with John or do some songs with John?”

So we did. This was kind of early pandemic, around the time of when the vaccines came out, but it was still pretty tight. I couldn’t go to Canada, so they met me in Seattle. We did a couple of songs together and it was just going so well that we just finished a record. I loved every minute of it. It’s pretty, wildly creative and bizarre at times. Definitely artistic and fun and got some real party-type elements to it. I don’t know how people will feel about it. I don’t know how their fanbase will feel about it. I don’t care. It was a lot of fun to make.

Bombay Bicycle Club – Everything Else Has Gone Wrong

There were several heartbreakers, with the pandemic, of records that I thought were so great that I was involved with [that] really got cut off at the knees. All those artists survived it, ultimately. Yeah, Bombay Bicycle Club, a lot of people were interested in them doing another record and it felt like the setup of that record was going great and it seemed like things were going to be awesome and the pandemic, obviously, shut that down, but they’re out there now touring and doing great.

With Bombay, again, I had no relationship with them. I was familiar with them; I thought what they did was interesting. If I remember correctly, somebody in the band really liked a Bill Callahan record I had done — which is funny, because that’s so not remotely anything like Bombay Bicycle Club. So we had a Zoom call or a Skype. It was casual — they’re very reserved British folk. Not like me, [who can] be a loud Texan sometimes. I think there was always an intention to make a record, but the way it started was we did a few songs together, like half a record, in London, at the Conch Studio, which is Ray Davies from The Kinks’ studio. Everything went great and then they came out to LA and we did the second half of the record together. The second half was a little more limber and experimental.

My suggestions on working with them were subtle, at best, [because] their ideas are really creative and really good. A lot of times, I was just suggesting that we take things out of the songs. It was such a calm record, working with them. Their execution was always really spot on. And they were very aware of what was a good take for them or not. So I just helped them out on that one. I remember the big joke making that record was just Guy Fieri. We love Guy Fieri. He does the sacred and the profane. There was a ton of doing hang loose the whole time, like anytime anyone would do a good take, it’d be like, you do the hang loose sign.

Angel Olsen – Burn Your Fire For No Witness

I’ve had an extremely long working relationship with [Angel]. That was the very first thing we ever did, though. The way that happened was she had just signed to Secretly Canadian for Jagjaguwar, and I have a close working relationship with all those guys, I’ve known the Swanson guys [Secretly Canadian co-founders Chris and Ben Swanson] since the ‘90s. And I think it was [VP of A&R at Secretly Group] Jon Coombs who emailed me and said, “Hey, we’re about to sign this artist named Angel Olsen, and we all think you’d be perfect for her. But she doesn’t think she needs a producer,” or whatever, so they sent me one song and I listened to like two bars of her singing, and I wrote back, “I’ll do it.” I just thought she was fucking amazing.

So we met and we got along and Angel is a fucking punk. She doesn’t want anyone telling her what to do. And I had no desire to tell her what to do on that record. She came into it with a suspicion of everything, of every aspect of how that record was going to come together, and I just endeavored to make sure that she knew that I was going to guard that vision at all costs. Everything was a discussion of what made her comfortable. What kind of record did she want to make? By the end of it, I think I gained her trust. I love Angel, we’re still very good buds. By the time we made All Mirrors together, the last record, we were firing on all cylinders with our relationship and our humor. I adore the work we do together. I think she’s just a fucking gangster.

St. Vincent – Strange Mercy

We did three St. Vincent records together right in a row. We did the David Byrne collaboration record [Love This Giant] — that’s four — and we did another album’s worth of just b-sides and songs that were in movies. There was like a five-year period where we were working together at least once a year. So it’s hard for me to break it down by album, in a weird way, because there wasn’t always like a huge delineation.

The trajectory with me and Annie [Clark] was, we met each other when I was producing a Polyphonic Spree record, which is the only record that she was involved in, meaning she played guitar on it. But she was around for the basic tracking of that record and we cut some guitars when we did the live band, and we really hit it off right away. We were all staying at a place together when we were doing that, so we were hanging out in the living room together, and she played me demos of songs that would be on her first record. I thought it was great. And I thought she was very funny.

We just became buds, and that friendship carried on to when her [first] record came out, and I sort of championed it. Then we talked a little bit about making Actor together, but she started that record with somebody else. And that went pear-shaped. She came in and scrapped the record and we started [over] together, and embarked on a really nutritious work period, you know. We did Actor, and we did Strange Mercy and the David Byrne record right around the same time.

The self-titled record really bled in from the last record, so it’s hard to even remember when we stopped or started. But by the time we were making that record, there was obviously an audience and we were aware of that. But it didn’t really change the process too much other than the fact that she was very busy at that point. And we involved a few more players on that record, whereas the other records were just her and me and occasionally a drummer. But the only difference of making that record was there was slightly more awareness that people gave a shit. She [also] made a move to [label] Loma Vista, which I think gave her more horsepower in terms of going on to winning Grammys and things like that — they’ve certainly put more financing behind her live show and things. So I think all that stuff was super helpful for her and sort of getting her this persona as St. Vincent, you know, I think that that was where that stuff started to get perfected was between Strange Mercy and that record.

The Walkmen – Lisbon

I was an admirer of Walkmen, but I had no relationship to them whatsoever. I was still living in Texas at the time, and their manager [sent an email] to my manager, like, “Hey, the Walkman are gonna be in Texas for South by Southwest, could they pop into John’s studio and just try a couple songs?” And I was like, “Fuck, yeah, let’s do it.” It turns out, I was out of town, on tour with my band and I couldn’t do that — so I was bummed. But then it just so happened that they were in Texas again very shortly after that, and the timing worked out but we literally had like, a day or two together. So they rolled into my studio. It was as raw a setup as possible. They were like, “Yeah, you know, I’d like to try some songs, I’ve heard some stuff you did in school,” and I find out that they’re in the middle of a record at that particular moment, and it’s just not going well, for whatever reason, like they just keep hitting their head up against the wall with it.

So I set them up very quickly. First thing we ever did was “Angela Surf City.” It was like, second take — done. They were happy with it. Then we cut another song. By the end of the day, they were like, “We want to come back and cut a record.” And that’s what they did. Recording, mixing was all done very quickly, I think maybe all told it was about it was a week. It was very instinctual — very few overdubs on that record, I’m sure you can tell it was extremely raw. Almost everything is a live take, and they just wanted it to sound as basic as possible, they didn’t want anything on the recording that wasn’t absolutely necessary, which was sort of at the time not what was happening in music. My big memory from that was just they would walk into the studio every day looking so fucking cool. They were so well dressed. And I was dressed the total hobo, of course, and they would walk in every day looking like male fucking models.

We haven’t worked together since then, but Hamilton [Leithauser] has asked me about working on almost every one of his solo records since then. The timing is always wrong or whatever, but I love those guys and I would work with the Walkmen any day again if they ever made another record.

Behind the Boards with John Congleton: Producer Talks St. Vincent, Angel Olsen, Tegan and Sara and More
Paolo Ragusa

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