STATE COLLEGE — The State Theatre recently announced the return of indie band Guster to its stage Friday, Jan. 22.
Guster sought out Shins keyboardist and Black Keys bassist Richard Swift to produce their most-recent album, “Evermotion.” They recorded it at Swift’s Cottage Grove, Ore., studio for three weeks in January 2014.
“I told Swift that our last two records took a year each to make,” said Guster’s Ryan Miller. “He told me he’d never spent more than nine days on an album.”
The band and producer got together anyway and the result is an album of raw acid-soaked chamber pop, and a stylistic departure that no one saw coming.
“It wasn’t hard to figure out where we overlapped with Swift,” said percussionist Brian Rosenworcel. “It was just a matter of trusting ourselves to go big and commit. Richard is the type of artist that’s always standing back and taking in the whole canvas.”
With a new looseness and swagger, Guster pushed the acoustic guitars into the background, instead exploring deeper drum grooves, keyboard textures and atmospheric noise — a language they shared easily with Swift. The band that emerged from this session sounds like one that is no longer evolving, but has evolved into something else entirely.
“Richard helped us figure out what was important about recording,” said guitarist Adam Gardner. “We had just one microphone over the drum kit, used whole takes, didn’t obsess over vocals or really edit things at all — it’s a raw version of our band, mistakes and all, that feels more relevant. He helped us tremendously with the big picture.”
Evermotion’s first single, the infectious “Simple Machine,” was hailed by Time magazine for its “frantic beats and crawling synthesizers.” Guster shows it is still learning new tricks with the variety heard in the album’s other songs: the chiming lullaby of “Long Night,” the shimmering “Endlessly,” the distorted steel drums and Bacharach melody of “Doin’ It by Myself,” the a cappella Beach Boys harmonies in the gently breezy “Lazy Love,” the dream pop of “Expectation,” the British Invasion beat of “Gangway,” the woozy trombones and whistling of “Never Coming Down” and the psychedelia of “It Is Just What It Is.”
Since forming at Tufts University in 1992, Guster has become one of the leading indie/alternative bands, releasing seven critically acclaimed albums in 20 years, starting with Parachute in 1995. “Evermotion” is the follow-up to 2010’s “Easy Wonderful,” which earned the band its highest-ever chart debut on the Billboard 200 at No. 22, while reaching No. 2 on both the SoundScan Alternative and iTunes charts.
The 2010 addition of multi-instrumentalist Luke Reynolds to the core group of founding members Miller, Gardner and Rosenworcel, added immeasurably to Guster’s expanding musical palette. Evermotion marks the first time that Reynolds joined for the pre-production and writing process, which took place in Rosenworcel’s Brooklyn basement during 2012 and 2013. Reynolds’ stamp is clear and his passion is all over the record, from his guitar melodies on “Lazy Love” to his fuzz bass on “Doin’ It By Myself.”
The new album also features sax and trombone accompaniment by Jon Natchez, whose stints with the War on Drugs, Beirut, Passion Pit and others have led NPR to call him “indie rock’s most valuable sideman.”
