You ditch the pick and automatically you’re right there.”ĭid he record with an amp or straight into the computer? “We used a vintage Vox amp that one of our techs had in his collection. It takes less time, too, rather than with a pick when you try to fatten up or warm up the sound. “I would never go so far as to say ‘You should.’ when it comes to fingerstyle or pick, but there’s definitely benefits that I’ve never found before.

It’s easier to play the part correctly, even though I’m so much less confident with my fingers than I am with a pick. He continues: “I’m not a trained person, so I still struggle with rhythm and playing in time, but this time I found that I locked in. I don’t know if it’s because there isn’t a piece of material between your fingers and the string.”įingerstyle playing has been a revelation to Mendel, it appears. One thing I realized, after all these years, is that the note is so much fatter with fingerstyle. You go through phases, you play around with stuff and you become fascinated with an idea in a certain phase. “Haha! Right? Almost like a traditional bass player. This sounds almost like maturity, I tell him.

I also used a lot of flatwound strings, oddly, and I was playing with my fingers, which is not my style.” “He’s really fond of working in Logic, so not everything was coming out of a stompbox or an amp – he’s willing to use a plugin to get a bass tone that’s really broken up and crazy-sounding. I kept waiting to spend an hour and a half on getting a snare drum sound or a bass tone – but no, he was like ‘Let’s throw it on and go!’ “He’s willing to experiment and he works really fast, which was really shocking to me because I expected him to be very methodical. If I don’t hear enough of that, I’m like ‘Dammit!‘ I like to throw as many things in there that are musically incorrect as possible, so they stand out. You’d think he’d be really conservative when it comes to getting bass sounds, but he’s not at all. “That’s the producer Greg Kurstin,” he explains, “and that really surprised me about working with him. Mendel may regard the lines on the new record as conservative, but the same can’t be said about the tones, many of which are gritty and overdriven. You asked me to play on it, this is what you’re gonna get!’ It sounded good to my ears, but I totally get how you’d find it jarring and repulsive.”

I sent it to him and said ‘All right, man. I loved it, because it was really jazzy and out there. “A friend of mine just sent me a track and said ‘Put the bass on this’ and it was wide open, with no structure to it whatsoever, so I basically did a couple of improvised passes on it. If I don’t hear enough of that, I’m like ‘Dammit!’ He adds: “I like to throw as many things in there that are musically incorrect as possible, so they stand out and hopefully have a bit of a signature to them. I think it would have been maybe a little more interesting if I’d stepped out a bit more on this record.” “Listening back to it after taking a break, I was really conservative, and I could hear that, and I’d rather have been asked to pull back by Dave or our producer, rather than self-editing. “I’m usually pretty mellow about that, but with this record, I would redo a lot of it,” he says, although he’s not being entirely serious, it seems. Given the extended delay between recording and release, has Mendel listened to the album and wished he’d recorded anything differently? “Thank goodness the album lyrics aren’t pulled right out of the headlines, so we have the ability to push it back six or eight months,” he notes. The coronavirus had other plans, though, hence the delayed release and the absence of any tour dates until late this year, or even 2022. The new album was recorded before the current pandemic and originally timed to tie in with the Foos’ 25th anniversary in 2020. The super-low notes would be out of place in this music.

“Look, I’m not judgmental about it – those things can be great – but in my style of music, it wouldn’t go over too well. “In the environment I grew up in, five-string bass guitar is a bit illegal!” he says.

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