The Lightness of Chris Walla, pt. 1 (Human Pursuits 6/2/23)

The producer, and former Death Cab for Cutie guitar player, on twenty years since 'Transatlanticism,' moving away from Montreal, Rick Rubin's approach to records, The O.C. effect and more.

VANCOUVER – It seems downright inconceivable in this age of Tiny Desk Concerts and TikTok, but twenty years ago, television was the way to discover new music. It was the early 2000s and we were living in a post-TRL world. Music videos mattered. Award shows mattered. Soundtracks mattered. Hell, even a random shout-out on a teen soap opera could change the trajectory of a band’s career. Don’t believe me? Ask any millennial about the first time they heard Death Cab for Cutie. Odds are, they’ll probably mention The O.C. and the show’s indie-rocker-in-chief, Seth Cohen.

As GQ’s Chris Gayomali writes, Seth Cohen taught me and many other teenagers that “liking Death Cab could in fact be an adequate substitute for a personality.” And while he’s kind of joking, he’s also kind of not. For teenagers in 2003, Death Cab was a shorthand, a way of communicating everything about yourself in just two little words. And their increased exposure coincided with what many would argue was their strongest album, Transatlanticism.

Kismet!

I’ve shirked off a lot of what I held precious at that age. But Death Cab and Transatlanticism are something I still hold dear. Twenty years later, the songs still sound fresh and complex. And I’m not the only one who seems to think so. Tickets to the band’s twenty-year anniversary tour sold out at an almost Taylor Swift-like pace.

With all this in mind, I decided to shoot my shot with former Death Cab guitarist and current producer to the stars Chris Walla. Our conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity, carried an incredible lightness and touched on his time living in Norway and Montreal, his passion for pickling, Rick Rubin’s approach to producing, his work with Tegan and Sara, The O.C.’s effect on the band and much more.

Things were just getting started, really, when Chris had to leave for another appointment and so we agreed to a second interview, which will be shared later this week.

Chris Walla and what I assume is a fjord.

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CW: Are you in Vancouver? Or Victoria?

ES: Vancouver.

CW: Vancouver. Okay.

ES: How long have you been in Norway?

CW: We moved back here at the end of 2019.

ES: How did you end up settling in Norway? Was it a family connection, or did you just pick a place on the map?

CW: In 2015, shortly after I left the band, my wife applied for and got into a master’s program up in Tromsø which is the northern-most “real” city in Norway. It’s up in the Arctic. So we moved up there for a couple of years. We loved it, but then we also wondered, “Do we live in the Arctic forever now? Really?”

And the answer was no.

We moved to Montreal. We were there for a couple of years, with the idea that Montreal would be it. That we would stay there. It’s a great city, we have friends there, and it felt like we could do it. It made sense with her work as well. And then we got there and realized, after maybe about 6 or 8 months of being there, that visiting Montreal and living in Montreal are two very different things… No shade to Montreal, but we did not enjoy living there.

Pretty quickly we started to plot our return to Norway. We started working on that in 2018, into 2019. There was a PhD position open in Trondheim and so we did another transatlantic move… We’re not going anywhere ever again.

ES: Was it the lack of french that hurt you in Montreal? Or where was the disconnect in terms of living versus visiting?

CW: It’s a lot of things. My wife is in linguistics and she speaks some french. Her specialty is early childhood second-language acquisition and all of the stuff that follows from that behaviourally, psychologically, and in terms of education and education policy… The language thing [in Quebec] has been sort of more or less contentious over time, but as the Legault government got sworn it, it just started to veer further and further into francophone first – in a pretty aggressive way. It just didn’t align with what we believe, and where we are in our lives. Having a second language is great and learning french is great. But the way that Quebec was going about mandating that felt really bad to us. 

And it was interesting living in Norway before going to Quebec because, on paper, the governments seem pretty similar. Sort of a socialist-leaning democracy right? The difference between Norway and Quebec is that Norway functions incredibly well. The snow gets cleared off the roads reliably, the infrastructure is good and the city’s not sort of crumbling and there are enough doctors and enough teachers. On and on and on. It was really notable to move to a city where a lot of that stuff wasn’t in play. There’s a lot of corruption and a lot of stuff has been partially privatized in this way where there are clearly some influences… Snow removal gets held over city hall’s head. Like “Yeah we’re just going to leave all this snow here for three or four days.” The city is kind of held hostage by itself a lot of the time.

That doesn’t really have anything to do with the language, but the medical system really does. We were there for two years and we didn’t have a primary care doctor. We were on a waiting list the entire time we were there. It’s pretty clear that a lot of people go to Montreal for school and then split for Switzerland or Belgium or France because they pay better. That’s a real quality of life problem.

The flip side of all that is it’s just a fucking fantastic city. It’s so cool and there are so many brilliant people doing so many brilliant things. There’s so much great food and there are so many different languages there. It’s just so rich and it’s such a tapestry and it’s so diverse… I think if I had moved there when I was 23 or something I probably would still be there. Moving there when I was 43, was just too much.

ES: I see it as Canada’s most European city in a lot of ways. Not just because they speak french, but architecturally, and in terms of culture, they have great nightlife which Canada doesn’t typically have.

How was COVID in Norway?

CW: The thing about the Norwegians is that, when the Prime Minister gets on TV and says “This is really serious, we need to stay inside and not go out and not talk to one another,” Norway basically responded to that with “Yeah, OK.” There are some features of Norwegian culture like alcohol is so expensive here. You have to be pretty well to do to go out to a bar and have four or five drinks. It’s just not something that people do on a nightly or even weekly basis… It’s kind of a living room culture… People are really happy to stay at home and be in bed by 8 o’clock and wake up at 5:30 AM.

ES: It sounds like you’ve really taken to it.

CW: Anywhere you live there’s something tedious that you don’t love. Coming back here from Montreal, the thing we talk about all the time is food. I miss the food, the restaurants… Norway is a lot of things but it is not a culinary powerhouse. The carrots are real good, the potatoes are real good… I would kill somebody for a really good salad.

ES: I was picturing fish on toast.

CW: Fish on rye crackers, basically. That part is a little hard but I’ve gotten good at pickling things.

ES: Living abroad, it might be easy to be divested from US politics… But from what I’ve seen on Twitter you’re pretty much keeping up with the agenda.

CW: I still have a foot in Seattle. Hall of Justice [my recording studio] is there, my family’s still there, so many of my friends are still there. It’s my hometown. You can leave but you can never really leave. It’s been a pretty gnarly three years for the States at large and especially a handful of cities. Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, Minneapolis. They’re just really different places than they were four years ago. Going back and seeing [Seattle]… I recognize the city but it’s not the same as it was in pretty recent memory.

Watching Seattle continue to dabble around the edges of addressing all the people who are living without homes, and… kind of toy with things that could turn into meaningful policy, the way a cat plays with a crumpled-up paper ball, it’s hard to watch. It’s hard to go back to and see on the ground because people are just hurting. And in a country and city that’s so rich, that has so much material and invested wealth. To not actually be able to figure out how to help people on the ground is really heartbreaking.

ES: Vancouver is also experiencing a lot of those same issues. How do you run the studio when you are so far away?

CW: The studio mostly takes care of itself, I guess. It’s a pretty unusual setup. Because I didn’t really come up recording in any sort of proper system. I never had a mentor and I never had a studio I interned in. I just started recording people. In a lot of ways I don’t know how to run a studio, I don’t have any idea. The thing that has worked out for me, for the most part, has been to give two or three trusted people the keys and open the door for freelancers and say “Come one come all.” It’s yours if you can pay the nominal day rate and you want to come work here. I’m not worried about stuff breaking, because stuff’s gonna break regardless if you’re a platinum-selling producer or a kid figuring stuff out… I think it’s really important to have places that are approachable and support some kind of creative expansion of what people are already doing on their laptops or in their bedrooms.

The studio is lucky because it’s basically located on a useless piece of real estate. It’s a tiny triangular building, it’s shaped like a piece of pie. And there’s nothing else that could be done with that piece of land… As long as I can cover the rent and the insurance, it’s kind of there. I don’t advertise, I’m not beating down doors to get people in there. But it seems to have word-of-mouth’d itself into long-term existence.

ES: You’re quite a talented producer in your own right. How does your living situation influence your ability to collaborate with other artists?

CW: I really did not do well with the remote work thing [that started with COVID]. A lot of people got into remote songwriting and remote production. I feel like my strongest suit as a producer is in group work. Group dynamics. Watching a group of people function together and teasing out how the relationship works. Trying to uncover what things a band has been doing really well and then what sorts of opportunities and creative doors they haven’t been opening, for whatever reason…. I feel like it’s my job to see that stuff, and when a good idea is a good idea, beyond what might be a person’s prescription role. So I just didn’t do a lot of work during COVID.

In the last year, I’ve been getting back into being in the room with bands. I miss it so much, I love it.

ES: Are you able to tell me what you’ve been working on?

CW: I just finished up a record for a Norwegian band called Virkelig… Norway’s really interesting because there are only 5 million people here. And so there are only about 5 million native speakers. Most young artists here are recording in English because to have any reach or impact beyond Norway, you’re not singing in Norwegian. So Virkelig are quite young, but they’re singing in Norwegian. They’re kind of a real old-school indie guitar band. They’re just really anachronistic, really unusual, but they’re fantastic. And it’s really a choice for them to sing in Norwegian. It’s self-limiting to a degree but you’re not trying to figure out how to express yourself in the second language. And that’s really beautiful, people really need that. We’ve been working on this record for a while, and it’s actually just been mastered in the past few days. It’s going to come out in March.

ES: It’s awesome to hear how passionate you are about record production, considering you’ve been doing it for the better part of 20 years.

CW: I love it, it’s so fun. I wouldn’t work on something if I didn’t like it. We’re all just trying to make ourselves feel whole, or we’re trying to reach people. Whatever it is. If someone’s at a point in their life where they want to try and do more of that or find a new way to reach people or dig deeper, I’m just so happy to do that. I’m not a slamming pop producer but I love to try and broaden a band’s perspective and give them more tools for moving forward. Show them, “Actually you could do this or this or this.” I just love the creative process.

ES: You used the phrase “creative expansion” earlier, which stands in contrast to someone like Rick Rubin, who’s been getting a lot of attention recently. I don’t know if you saw the 60 Minutes interview, but we just watched it, and he said his goal is to see things expressed in as minimal a way as possible. Your approach seems almost counter to that. 

Stereogum @stereogum

Superproducer Rick Rubin explains his process: “I have no technical ability. And I know nothing about music.” stereogum.com/2210759/rick-r…

CW: It’s funny, it’s not even at odds with the Rick Rubin thing. By the way, I’ve just been loving the conversation around him, because everyone is weighing in… I love Rick Rubin, and I also really understand why people would dunk on him after watching that interview. Record producers tend to be of a couple different types, and one type is someone who makes hits. Who is a sure bet for a client and their label.

ES: Like Max Martin, cold calculated, I’ll tell you exactly the math behind this as to why it will be a hit.

CW: Exactly, guys like that. Sure bets. Labels love them because they need a particular kind of hit. It’s just like when you go to McDonald’s… You want that thing, and that’s where you get it. And sometimes artists really love working with those kinds of producers, and sometimes they fucking hate it… So that’s one camp. On the other end of the spectrum are producers artists love, who are able to peer into the terrarium of the creative process and point out cool things. Like, “What’s that? We should try that for a while. What do you think?”

To me, Rick Rubin does both in a way. By the time the records are done, they do tend to be really minimal. He’s into dry vocals. Those Red Hot Chili Peppers records are a drum kit, a guitar, a bass and Anthony Kedis doing whatever he’s doing on the top. Four elements. That’s it. But the process of getting there is a process of personal exploration that involves a lot of digging, and I think it involves a lot of introspection and I think it also involves a lot of play. Just trying things.

One of the things I try to make time for, and try to delineate a little when I’m working on a record, is making time for that type of play. Like, we have no idea what we’re doing today. Making sure there are hours built into every day, or days built into every week, where we make a huge mess and maybe have nothing to show for it. Because the process of doing that is, even if it isn’t conventionally productive, it tends to be really clarifying. It tends to point you back at work… Maybe this thing we’re making a huge mess out of could be super simple. But it takes making a mess of the record and a mess of the room before you find that stuff.

ES: I think it’s a really interesting push and pull. I’d never assume you’ve read this newsletter but it’s a mix of interviews and then creative writing stuff, and I’ve thought a lot about how capitalism has a tendency to take things that seem logical and pushing them to illogical boundaries… Like in the current music system, the way musicians make money is through creating a constant flow of content, constantly feeding the machine. But at a certain point, that runs counter to the actual creative process because it doesn’t allow for things like play or exploration.

CW: Yeah, I think that’s really true. I’m certainly not chasing the algorithm with whatever I’m doing. 

ES: I haven’t seen Death Cab on TikTok yet, but I’m giving it until the fall.

CW: TikTok is so bizarre. When did the Mother Mother song blow up? 2019 maybe? That stuff does happen. These songs get picked out of nowhere and sort of pushed to the front.

ES: The reason I’m betting Death Cab or The Postal Service resurfaces is only because the tour seems so popular already.

It strikes me that you and Rick Rubin both seem to model the “producer-as-therapist.” You both seem invested in the people behind the music. And in some ways, I think Rick established the template for that approach.

CW: Rick is listening to the people as much as he’s listening to the things they’re making. The couple times I hung out with him… He’s just cool to hang out with. And not in a he’s-the-coolest-guy-in-the-room kind of way. He’s just really engaged and he’s really engaging. He makes eye contact with you. He’s interested in what you’re saying. And the thing is, western culture is paradoxically obsessed with cult leaders and then really suspicious of people who are actually good, well-meaning, leadership role creative partners. A lot of people seem to be taking the stance that he’s a hack snake oil salesman. He’s just not. In that interview, he’s just really candid.

ES: I think part of it comes from low-simmering jealousy. Who wouldn’t want to work with their favourite artist and give a vibe check? Anyone who says they don’t want to make millions of dollars doing that is lying. He has an incredible life.

CW: I think the angle that is really interesting to explore is one of entitlement. The thing [music critic] Jessica Hopper keeps bringing to the front is, can you imagine anybody other than a white man looking like that and saying all that and having people support him? And she’s right. That’s not shade on Rick, but that’s where we are. 

ES: There’s never been more super producers or producers acting as gurus for big-name artists, and yet we rarely hear about female producers. Why do you think that is? Is the industry just that hostile?

CW: I think the industry is totally hostile towards female producers and engineers. We’re still living in the myth of the dude rock band, and the dude rock band doing their dude thing with the dude producer and going on the dude tour. Mercifully, there are so many people chipping away at that, but there’s still such a barrier to entry for anyone who’s not a white dude. It’s infuriating, it’s so frustrating.

Catherine Marks did the boygenius record that’s coming out. She’s fucking spectacular, she’s so good. Catherine was Alan Moulder’s assistant - he mixed Codes and Keys for Death Cab. That’s when I met with Catherine and worked with her a bunch. She was still working as his assistant at that point and just starting to do her own production work. She’s amazing. I’m really excited for her, she’s been getting great records for years now. She’s somebody who’s doing really well. It’s just tough. Obviously, I can only speak to it from a distance, observationally. But over and over and over, from my friends who are women who are trying to do it, it’s just such a slog. It’s so hard to be taken seriously, it’s so hard to be hired. You have to prove yourself 14 times as hard… It’s not for the quality of the work, it’s just sexism.

ES: That brings me to your work with Tegan and Sara. I was reading an interview they did with NPR discussing the 10-year anniversary of The Con, which you worked on. That was a pivotal record for me and I think, a lot of Canadian teenagers, and I don’t think I realized how poorly it was received by some big-name publications at the time. What was your experience on that record, and after?

CW: The experience of making the record was incredible. So rich and so DIY and so warm and fuzzy but also prickly and bloody. Just really raw. Topically it’s a very intense record. They’ve talked at length about how it was a tough time for them. But the record was an exercise in trying to lead by following the leader. Saying yes to things until it didn’t make any sense.

At that point, Tegan was brimming with energy and anger and pushing on it super hard, and Sara was starting to do some stuff that was pretty weird. Her demos are just wild. And rather than try to bridge the gap between them at that point, in terms of where they were headed, it was just a matter of saying “This stuff can live together.” Crazy rock songs and weird little acoustic songs, songs that are in the vicinity of segue. Why don’t we just do them all? I feel so fortunate to have been a part of it, to help facilitate it and get it out of the gates. And I’m so happy people enjoyed it.

The critical voice at the time was really hostile. Did the Pitchfork review really call it “tampon rock”?

ES: Apparently. I haven’t read the actual review but it was mentioned in the NPR thing.

CW: I read it not that long ago. Like, oh my god. Really?

I knew when we finished that record that there was something about it. Sometimes you finish a record and it’s like an object. It feels a little flat… You can tell you just made a thing, and it’s never going to change or grow. But every now and then you finish a record and it feels like it’s still alive even though you’re done with it. It’s a houseplant that changes with the seasons. It flowers, it bares fruit. Emotionally [The Con] felt like that for me. In the course of working on it, between when we started tracking and when I finished working on it 4 or 5 months later, the songs changed so many times. And not because we were doing anything to them. They changed in the same way that a room looks different as the sun moves across the sky… And that’s special. Those songs are special, those records are special and the recordings are special. Even though it’s not perfect – there are some things about how it sounds, sonically, that I wish we had done differently – but none of that shit matters. The songs are communicating so well. The things Tegan and Sara were feeling and all of the emotions that were happening for them come through the speakers. You don’t always get to choose that… It doesn’t happen automatically.

ES: Tegan and Sara have said The Con was a turning point in the band. I wonder if it was a turning point for you as well because you co-produced the follow-up Sainthood, which sounds quite different.

CW: Sainthood was really challenging. I think there are some great things about that record and some really good moments. I also think, in hindsight, I overplayed my hand… Death Cab had just come off of making Narrow Stairs… The vast majority of which was the four of us on the floor together. 

I love Narrow Stairs, it’s one of my favourite Death Cab records. It’s held up pretty well and largely for that reason. There’s a chemistry cooked into the record from the experience of the four of us playing together live. It was a fairly tense record for the band, a little bit acrimonious. Some really tough moments, some pretty gnarly disagreements. You’re playing with fire in the studio when you’re trying to get a band under those circumstances. I think we got really lucky. I think that anger translated into something that’s really vital.

Anyways, I was coming off Narrow Stairs and just thinking “This is the way to make a record.” And I wanted that for Tegan and Sara. They were happy to go along with that as a concept. But as we got into rehearsals, the material Sara brought in was not lending itself particularly well to that format. And I kept pushing on it anyway. We started the rehearsals with their live band, and I made the excruciating decision to fire the rhythm section, which still haunts me and keeps me up at night. So the record was Jason [McGerr] from Death Cab on the drums and I played the bass on that record.

The commitment to the concept of the record was really absolute and in hindsight, it didn’t need to be. The songs it serves well, it serves really well. The hotspots on that record are so cool. But there’s a bunch of songs [that would have benefitted] if we had… done more of what we did on The Con. Not in terms of style but in terms of a more personal approach. More play, more experimenting. I have some missed opportunity regret around that record.

ES: My sister would kill me if I didn’t ask about the band’s relationship with The O.C. The show had that iconic quote that the band was “One guitar and a whole lot of complaining.” How did it feel to hear that, knowing there were two guitars?

CW: [Laughs] I have really mixed feelings about that quote because on one hand, it’s really dismissive and it’s really one-dimensional. Read another way, though, it’s not totally incorrect. At the core of it is something really interesting. I dunno.

The O.C. was fascinating. It happened in the blink of an eye. It all happened so quickly. It bubbled up and bloomed and peaked and was gone in what felt like a week. And that’s because we were so busy. We were doing so many things. We were making records, we were on tour. In the span of The O.C. we toured The Photo Album, I worked on two Nada Surf records and a The Long Winters record. Then we made Transatlanticism and then Tegan and Sara happened and The Decemberists and then we made Plans. And The O.C. is somewhere in there. I remember we played at [the show’s fictional indie rock venue] The Bait Shop and that was madness. All of those people were really cool. I really enjoyed meeting the cast.

ES: It might be a hard question to answer but what was the band’s mood heading into Transatlanticism. People talk about that record and Give Up as the culmination of Ben Gibbard, as if he achieved everything he set out to do. But that record also sounds so good. Did you know, heading into the studio, that you had something different?

CW: Transatlanticism was a sort of rebirth for the band, in no small part because Jason joined the band in 2002 before we recorded. We almost tore one another apart during our fall 2001 tour supporting The Photo Album. It was really gnarly. There were a lot of things that were unclarified and unsaid. This is something that happens a lot with bands… 

When you start a band, you’re doing it because you have a kind of creative impulse and relationship with people who are your friends or might become your friends. When you go on your first tour, you’re all putting everything on the line for the same reason. Quitting jobs, taking time off jobs. And that changes for everybody in the first few years of the band. Particularly if the band has some kind of success. Things were going pretty well for us as we got into The Photo Album, but we were already splintering a little bit. I wanted to do production work and Ben was collaborating with other people. Michael [Schorr] who was playing [drums] with us at the time was part of the band, but ultimately he wasn’t the right guy. The chemistry of the band was really damaged and toxic. 

When Jason came on board, he brought this amazing older brother energy that I didn’t realize we needed as much as we did… I think the combination of his energy… He had a kind of confidence and, it’s funny to call it swagger because he’s so humble, but he has this really interesting gravity. He just says what you’re going to do. Like, “These are not the droids you’re looking for.” And you’re just like “Okay.” So much of that was the spirit of that album, and it coincided with a batch of songs that were really strong and had all the makings of being a really iconic slate of tunes. Some of it is just dumb luck, really.

Like I said earlier, you do everything you can to try and create an environment where a record like that can grow… At a certain point that’s all, you can do.

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Chris Walla is a record producer and guitarist. He lives in Trondheim.