Sub Pop Records

GRAND ARCHIVES

It can be easy, sometimes, to forget where you started. When the goal that you set out to create no longer carries any resemblance to the original plan, and the finished product is as much of a surprise as it is a completion. In a lot of ways that was how Keep in Mind Frankenstein came to be.

Singer-guitarist Mat Brooke had big plans for Grand Archives’ sophomore album. The band had written a slew of new songs, and honed them during sound checks around the world. They were good to go. And when they entered the studio and the tapes started rolling?

“It sounded kind of… Like guys who don’t really play rock music trying to rock out,” confesses Mat.

Their record, it seems, had very different plans for how it wanted to sound. Except for “Dig That Crazy Grave,” a buoyant ditty redolent of Southern California and summer afternoons, all the material originally slated for the album wound up on the cutting room floor. Yet as the earlier songs fell away, new ones were composed to take their place. “And the record took on a new identity,” says Mat, “a little darker than the first album.”

Sometimes the group had barely scanned the lyrics before they stepped into the vocal booth to record harmonies. “As opposed to singing like you’ve practiced the song for a year, we were singing each one like it was the first time… because it really was,” says Mat. Not that he’s complaining. “This sounds a lot more alive.”

The album’s finest moments include several happy accidents; little ideas nurtured with help from producer Ben Kersten (who also recorded The Grand Archives, the band’s…