Houndmouth goes directly ‘From the Hills’ into the limelight

Shane Cody didn’t sense any pressure when Houndmouth began work on the follow-up to its 2013 debut album, From the Hills Below the City. He didn’t, that is, until someone brought up the subject.

“We were all so new to being a real band, so we didn’t think about any of that until we got asked that question right before we were about to record,” the drummer says. “We were like, ‘Oh, thanks. No pressure.’ But there wasn’t any, really. We’re just going to keep writing what we want to write. We don’t feel pressure from any of that. At least, I don’t.”

From the Hills proved to be a major breakout for the New Albany, Ind./Louisville-based quartet, with a collection of earthy, homegrown Americana tunes that earned frequent comparison to The Band’s vintage blend of roots-music ingenuity and elemental rock ’n’ roll. The considerable touring for Houndmouth that ensued heightened audiences’ expectations for the 2015 followup, Little Neon Limelight. It also sharpened the abilities of Cody, guitarist Matt Myers, keyboardist Katie Toupin and bassist Zak Appleby to work as a more cohesive and industrious unit. In short, the four learned how to further their musical identity as a band.

“I think Little Neon Limelight is pretty much — collectively, as a band — our first record,” Cody says. “That’s how I look at it. We had had the songs from the first record kind of before knowing each other personally. Really, we only wrote a couple of those songs together. So this is our first record as a real band, I think. So it was cool to work with each other a little more. Basically, the approach was pretty much whoever writes a song sings it. But the music also kind of got thrown into a pot. We would take this verse or that chorus and kind of split things up.”

What resulted were songs that downplayed the Americana reflections (save for all the swirling B3-like keyboard lines that bring Garth Hudson of The Band to mind) by beefing up the pop vocabulary. That practice explains the revved-up Beach Boys flavor of 15 Years, the pure pop stride of Black Gold and the stark, spacious sound of Gasoline.

“The songs just kind of went off on their own,” Cody says. “When we were writing a song, we were never like, ‘Oh, let’s make it sound like this.’ I would never write a pop song like that. Like, for Gasoline, we were sitting outside the studio in a little kitchenette area. We were sitting on a couch, making a bourbon or making some coffee, and someone was like, ‘That sounds really good. What is that?’ So we set the room mics up in the kitchen and we all recorded within the room, just us and two mics. It was real spontaneous. Probably one of my favorite moments.’

“Someone,” in this instance, was producer of the moment Dave Cobb, the seemingly omnipresent pop-Americana stylist behind recent records by Jason Isbell and Kentuckians Chris Stapleton and Sturgill Simpson.

“Dave was really cool — super laid-back and a really great guy,” Cody says. “I didn’t know too much about him before. But when I walked into his studio for the first time, we were all in this little room working and Dave would come in almost like a maestro in an orchestra. He’d grab a shaker or something and point at me and be like, ‘A little louder’ or ‘a little softer.’ It was cool. We just decided to leave a bunch of the banter, with us talking, on the record. We were like, ‘Why not?’ It’s what it was — all of us in a room together just playing music.”

References to The Band haunt Houndmouth, but the spirits are a lot friendlier these days now that the foursome has dissected the recordings of its would-be inspiration along with the solo music of perhaps its most prominent member, the late Levon Helm.

“When we started getting all the Band comparisons, we didn’t know much about them,” Cody says of The Band. “We knew The Weight and Up On Cripple Creek, but none of us really delved deep into their catalog. Once we started getting those comparisons, we all went on a binge. So later, Levon definitely became a huge influence, obviously with me, with his singing and drumming. I’ve actually changed the side of my microphone, where I put it when I sing, to what he did. You can get a little more range when you put it to your right and higher up. So for that, thanks, Levon.

“Here’s one of the coolest things that has happened to me. A couple of years ago, our van got broken into. I had just found a Levon solo record called Electric Dirt. It was sealed. I bought it in a record store, although I forget where we were. When the van got broken into, that got taken, so I tweeted something about it. Then last year, on my doorstep, a fan just sent me a copy of it. It blew my mind. It was the nicest, coolest thing ever.”

This story was originally published March 3, 2016 at 11:39 AM with the headline "Houndmouth goes directly ‘From the Hills’ into the limelight."