The Arcs: Nature’s Children
Dan Auerbach is facing a stadium-size crowd in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park when he pauses to thank the other members of The Black Keys. It’s the Saturday night of the city’s eighth annual Outside Lands and Auerbach’s primary project is headlining the main stage—on the nal night of the latest leg of their never-ending world tour. The Keys blast through bluesy, festival-era anthems like “Fever,” “Tighten Up,” “Lonely Boy” and “Little Black Submarines” while illuminated by a series of black-and-white images on oversized screens. Auerbach acknowledges his longtime Black Keys partner, drummer Patrick Carney, and then, nods to their current support system, bassist Richard Swift and keyboardist John Clement Wood. In almost every way, the show feels like a culmination—the type of climatic movie-scene finale that will send Auerbach and Carney off into the sunset to quietly work on the follow-up to 2014’s chart-topping Turn Blue. But Auerbach is not only already gearing up to release another album in a month—the deep-crate-driven Yours, Dreamily,—but also to launch an entirely new band, The Arcs, an experimental supergroup that feels like his answer to both The Raconteurs and The Wrecking Crew.
“A lot of people end up making the same album over and over again, but I don’t want to do that Groundhog Day thing,” Auerbach says a few days earlier while in Los Angeles filming a video for “Outta My Mind,” The Arcs’ current single. “I want to be the type of musician that you can grow with, not someone you can’t listen to when you grow up.”
Auerbach was a record-store clerk and music nerd before he found success playing music, and that quest to avoid a Groundhog Day nightmare has served as the singer/guitarist’s mission statement since shortly after he formed The Black Keys with Carney in Akron, Ohio 14 years ago. Though the Keys started out as a narrowly de ned garage-y, guitar-and-drums blues-rock duo, over the years, they’ve pushed their own stylistic boundaries through various forays into hip-hop, Muscle Shoals soul and Danger Mouse-produced weirdness—while still coloring within the lines enough to give the group a proper identity. Auerbach has remained incredibly busy outside the Keys, too. (He’s worked as a producer and songwriter for such diverse names as Dr. John, Lana Del Rey, Bombino, Valerie June, Ray LaMontagne, The Growlers, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, and JEFF The Brotherhood.) In many ways, The Arcs are a culmination of all his extracurricular endeavors—a soulful, psychedelic second band featuring many of the multi-instrumentalists and knob-twisters that have helped turn Auerbach into one of the most well-respected indie producers around, even as he is still capable of selling out arenas with his own band.
Driven by Auerbach’s familiar Fat Possum-approved vocals and trademark fuzz-guitar riffs, The Arcs’ sound is identifiable, though the record’s broad sonic palette and sideshow-attraction funkiness take the band to art-rock places that would feel out of place with the Keys. However, unlike Auerbach’s brief irtation with a solo career in 2009, The Arcs are a true collaboration among six-feet-from- stardom musicians. Besides Auerbach on guitar and vocals, The Arcs’ lineup boasts Daptone family members like keyboardist Leon Michels, drummer Homer Steinweiss and bassist Nick Movshon, as well as Shins keyboardist and psych-pop mystic Swift, who moves to the other side of the rhythm section to primarily play drums with the quintet.
“These are my oldest musical buddies— besides Pat,” Auerbach says, connecting the résumé dots between his Arcmates with Kevin Bacon-like precision. “We’ve been making records for ve, six years together—Swift and Leon in particular. We’ve done all kinds of albums. They’re my closest friends.”
In fact, Michels, who produced Yours, Dreamily, with Auerbach, and Swift have already logged thousands of miles on the road alongside Auerbach as touring members of the Keys: Michels played keyboards with the duo when they rst added backing musicians in 2010, while Swift has held down the group’s low-end onstage since early 2014. They are both also well-respected producers and cult heroes in their own right who have worked on some of the past decade’s biggest records. When Auerbach and Michels nished combing through their jam sessions, they realized they had approximately 75 songs in various stages of completion. Everyone agreed that the music was too good to gather dust on a hard drive, but it didn’t feel quite in line with an Auerbach solo album either. So the three already sleep- deprived musicians did what came naturally—they formed a new band.
“The Arcs are a happy accident,” Swift says with a bit of laid-back, Pacific Northwest-stoner ease. “When we first started jamming, I thought these sessions were going to be for one of Dan’s solo records, or maybe we’d put out some weird Captain Beefheart cover 45. But all of a sudden, we were writing songs together and it accidently turned into a band.”
Auerbach is more methodical when he recounts their origin. “We created The Arcs as a platform for us to continue to be creative and share that creativity with people,” he says before giving in to this enthusiasm. “It was a wake-up call—it lit a fire under our ass.”
The Arcs’ roots actually predate the current retro-soul and psychedelic-rock boom by over 15 years. As teenagers coming of age in the late ‘90s, Michels, Movshon and Steinweiss were part of the Meters-inspired, New York-bred organ group The Mighty Imperials and fans of the pioneering funk-revival label Desco. As the now-mythical story goes, they made eye-opening pilgrimages to see bands in Desco’s orbit, including Afrobeat orchestra Antibalas and an embryonic version of The Dap-Kings. Through a friend’s girlfriend, they passed a demo to Desco label founders Philippe Lehman and Gabe Roth, the latter of whom started Daptone in 2002.
Lehman and Roth agreed to work with The Mighty Imperials after school, igniting a new generation of retrotted soul and funk enthusiasts who would go on to reach across the aisle into hip-hop, indie and jambandia. “They brought us in, schooled us and made us mixtapes of old funk 45s,” Michels says of the time when they were known to Roth as “the kids.” “We became part of that crew—I played saxophone in The Dap-Kings, Homer played drums with The Dap-Kings and Nick was almost first-generation Antibalas.”
Michels took his early studio lessons seriously, and in 2004, he co-founded Truth & Soul records with Lehman and Je Silverman. He is also responsible for introducing the world to Lee Fields, a then-secret bridge to the original soul revolution. “Nick and Leon made this Lee Fields album, My World, that I just loved and listened to every day while The Black Keys were making [2010’s] Brothers,” Auerbach says. “I was driving around Muscle Shoals in my rental car, absorbing that Lee Fields record. So, of course, when we toured the album, Nick and Leon were the people I wanted to help us play those songs onstage. I reached out to ‘em—I had never met them before—and they agreed to come on tour with us.
Since their salad days, Michels and Movshon had kept busy with El Michels A air, a funk out t with some Wu-Tang Clan cred, and the groovy, Afro-soul project Menahan Street Band. Like other artists in the Daptone family, they were also racking up studio credits with the likes Amy Winehouse, Jay-Z and, later, Bruno Mars. “I was so isolated in our own little world of Brooklyn soul that I didn’t even listen to that much outside music,” Michels says humbly. “I had heard some of The Black Keys and they were cool but when Dan sent me Brothers, I immediately said yes because that record has my aesthetic as far as that fuzzy soul sound. Dan and I had this immediate bond—he’s a record nerd and knows everything about every style.”
At the time, Auerbach was stepping up his own production game, looking toward building a studio and putting together a team of session musicians. It felt natural for him to bring Michels and Movshon into the fold.
“Dan started working on Dr. John’s Locked Down around when we joined the live band—that was the rst record I worked with him on, and then we did Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence and Ray LaMontagne’s Supernova. We’ve been making music ever since,” he adds.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, the Oregon-based Swift was quietly resetting the psychedelic dial to the late- ‘60s. In addition to his own steady stream of lo-fi recordings, Swift turned heads through his work with indie singer-songwriter Damien Jurado, and truly made his mark thanks to psych-rock princes Foxygen (who handed off their own demo to Swift outside a Lower East Side club). Swift produced Foxygen partners Sam France and Jonathan Rado’s breakout release We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic, massaging their throwback pixie-psych into one of the biggest art records of the past five years. More than a hired hand, he left his ngerprints on the record and pushed tastemakers Jagjaguwar to sign them.
Recording at his home studio, Swift’s impossibly chill demeanor has the uncanny ability to cut through even the most Type-A musical personality. He also has a speedy reputation. “If a band comes to me and they’ve got 10 to 12 songs, the sessions are going to take 10 to 12 days,” Swift says of his rapid- re, warts-and-all production approach. “The longest time I’ve ever spent on a record was with Guster—that was a month with some breaks.”
“Between tours, Dan and I would record as much as possible in Nashville,” Swift says while surveying his past two years. “On a friendship level, it’s been great being able to tour with those guys and hang out with them late-night. I really love playing bass with Pat, and every night Dan and I go back to one of our hotel rooms and watch stupid TV shows. It’s the same with The Shins. When we’re o stage, we hang out, turning each other on to new music.” He pauses to rephrase his thoughts and adds, “and turn each other on to old music.”
On a quiet September night, about a month after Outside Lands, The Arcs are celebrating the release of Yours, Dreamily, with an NPR event at New York’s tiny Housing Works Bookstore Café. The Black Keys’ lm-quality screens have been replaced by trippy video projections that feel totally Acid Test (for a bookstore, industry event). Mariachi Flor de Toloache, who eshed out The Arcs’ debut, open the show and then augment the group throughout their set. Auerbach appears particularly relaxed, despite the recording equipment in the room, even putting down his guitar for a song and showing o some dance moves. The Arcs blast through almost their entire record and even throw in a rare reggae cover that bleeds into a song from their “next album.”
“We’re still figuring out what this is to everybody,” Auerbach admits. “But at the moment, it’s starting to feel like there’s a particular sound that we’re getting. There’s something happening. The more we’re recording, the more cohesive our music is becoming.”
Despite already having over 70 songs in the can before they officially formed, The Arcs decided to write and record a set of new material for their album. Bringing Movshon and Steinweiss on board, they camped out for quick sessions at Los Angeles’ Sound Factory, Queens’ Diamond Mine, Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound in Nashville and the third-floor lounge of Electric Lady in Manhattan. The music flew out of them. Then, Tchad Blake mixed the album on his horse farm in Wales. Michels estimates that “there’s probably 20 songs that didn’t make it from the time we actually decided to make a record.”
In an era when acid rock and retro grooves are in the midst of an unexpected comeback, The Arcs feel both current and singular. Likewise, the album’s soulful undertones and Auerbach’s benchmarks push the record somewhere between a lost Nuggets disc and the authentic arena-rock that The Black Keys have helped revive in recent years.
“Dan, Leon and I want to make experimental music but, sometimes, experimental music is pop music,” Swift says. “You can make the weirdest sounds all day long and then, sometimes, we just wanna sing a chorus or write some good lyrics for a verse. I think we all equally add to the weirdness in The Arcs’ record. Everything’s based on a live performance, every single song. It starts with us playing in the studio together, and that’s pretty traditional. And then we just stay up late at night, kind of hashing out and stretching things and cutting things out and adding strange noises.”
Yours, Dreamily, opens with a spoken- word intro enhanced with crazy circus- music effects before blasting into the radio-ready anthem “Outta My Mind.” “Stay in My Corner” is driven by The Arcs’ Daptone-schooled rhythm section but spiced up with Auerbach’s slide-guitar solos, while “Nature’s Child” masks its spooky Halloween sounds with keyboard swirls, synthesized drums and sexy horns. The loop-heavy “Come And Go” shows of the band’s studio wizardry, “Chains Of Love” could have fit on Locked Down and the slinky “Velvet Ditch” may as well have been a lost 45 tune. Auerbach says he didn’t know Mariachi Flor de Toloache were an all-girl outfit when he was looking for some fiesta sounds, but “we clicked right off the bat. They adapted so quickly and they’re so good at improvising.” Stray studio banter and strange childlike voices occasionally peer out between the songs.
Auerbach shies away from using the word psychedelic, but he says the record “works as a whole—the songs are movements, more like scenes from a movie than song after song. It just feels a little bit more like we’re painting a picture, creating an environment to live in for a few minutes. We want to create an inner space for your brain to hang out.” The album’s fluidity, in particular, is a result of Auerbach’s deep love of the Grateful Dead, the first band he saw live.
“I hold the Grateful Dead very dear to my heart,” he admits. “That was music that I listened to growing up, with my dad. They were so great as a band, so deep. I can always jump back to the Grateful Dead and be amazed.”
“We definitely love the Grateful Dead,” Swift chimes in. “I love some Allman Brothers too, but the Dead, in particular, have been a huge touchstone for us. Very many times when we are o stage with The Black Keys, Dan I are not just listening to the Dead, but physically playing Grateful Dead songs— guring out the chords to ‘Candyman.’ I’m from just outside Eugene, Ore., so the Grateful Dead are part of my culture. The people I hang out with are Grateful Dead family.” He pauses when the conversation shifts to the Dead’s recent Fare Thee Well reunions. “And I didn’t want to go to these last concerts just because Jer Bear wasn’t there. Like, I love Leonard Cohen, and I’ve had plenty of chances to see him, but I’d rather keep his early records in mind.”
The Black Keys have always been a marriage of Auerbach and Carney’s influences—the drummer is notoriously firmly on the Pavement side of the once great indie/jam divide—and as The Arcs sessions took shape, Auerbach was searching for a similar blend of influences.
“The music sounds like our fucking record collections squashed into one song,” Michels says. “The Keys have a very specific way of working. It involves [producer Brian Burton aka Danger Mouse] too, but it’s always the two of them. And that’s why I don’t really think we sound like The Black Keys. Pat’s a big part of that sound.”
In 2012, after Auerbach turned his focus back to The Black Keys, Carney told Relix: “When Dan wanted to do [the solo project], it pissed me off. It wasn’t a clean discussion. But, within a few months, when we were getting back together, I [thought] maybe he needed to get it out of his system.” Between The Black Keys’ continued success and Auerbach’s various production projects, The Arcs are also a sign that he’s part of a healthy ecosystem.
“I could have probably just put my name on this record, but it wouldn’t have felt right because it wasn’t just my record,” Auerbach says. “And, honestly, when I decided—when we decided—to call it The Arcs, everybody else got more involved and made it more enjoyable. That’s just kind of how we’ve been rolling with it.”
For a band born out of countless studio jams, it makes sense that The Arcs are just as excited to talk about future releases as their current album. The quintet have readied an EP and are thinking of ways to release some of their initial jam sessions. They are also deep into their second album, which Swift says will feature even more of his drumming, and he’s “over the moon” about it.
“Nobody listens to albums much anymore, compared to how they used to,” Auerbach is careful to point out. “So, from a business point of view, I think the smartest thing to do would be to try and make singles. But we already have a whole other album done. The more we keep working, the more we keep focusing on it, the more challenging it is. It makes me excited.”
