Taking Back Sunday's New Again is a rock democracy
The album will feature the band's new guitarist and a bass solo.
Dec. 1, 2008
They might not look it, but there are a few culinary prodigies in front of this chain link fence. Just ask Denny's.
(Click graphic to enlarge)
There's an age-old metaphor for a band as a meal. The bassist is the hearty foundation, the guitarist the spice and the singer the topping. Taking this concept to a more literal level, Denny's invited Taking Back Sunday to create an item for its Rockstar Menu — Taking Back Bacon Burger Fries.
Pleased with the results, the late-night staple asked bassist Matt Rubano and his bandmates to participate again for a second menu. This time around, Rubano masterminded the Melty Grilled Chicken and Sausage Quesadilla.
"They invited us to come down to this huge 'Top Chef'-style kitchen and had hundreds of ingredients laid out and a couple of the executive chefs from Denny's there and just let us kind of run wild in a kitchen, which for the five of us was something that you know we're going to get into," Rubano said.
The band's first record, Tell All Your Friends, was a highly streamlined album that reveled in basic pop rock. But with time and lineup changes, the band forged a new highly nuanced, heavily Police-tinged sound on its third album, Louder Now.
"Over the years it's become more and more comfortable to me to play in," Rubano said. "I first approached the band in a very supportive way where I just wanted to support the songs. Now I feel a lot more freedom and ability to create and have that creativity recognized and encouraged with my bandmates."
The band relocated to its hometown, Long Island, N.Y., to record New Again and found new guitarist Matt Fazzi introduced novel elements into the music. Beyond the odd time signatures and tempos, Taking Back Sunday has gone somewhere where few rock bands have before — the proper bass solo.
"(Vocalist) Adam Lazzara always wants to hear me play more or something unique or something different," Rubano said. "He's always coming up with the craziest ideas that at first I'm like, 'Eh, I don't know if that's going to work.' And then when I try it I'm like, 'Oh, that's fuckin' genius.' So while I come up with a lot of good ideas, so do my bandmates and they create a space for me to do those things in."
For Rubano, a Berklee College of Music graduate, the countless hours spent practicing and focusing on one particular kind of music at school revealed the limitations of his playing. Joining Taking Back Sunday brought everything into perspective.
"I wasn't always trying to be as creative as I could be so much as trying to imitate all this music that I was really interested in at the time," Rubano said. "It wasn't until I moved back to New York and realized that playing in a rock band or an R&B group or all these different kinds of things was really what I loved to do."
Rubano's band is a democratic process today, with each member developing ideas for others. It's interesting, then, that Rubano's experience in the Denny's kitchen was more or the less the opposite.
"(Guitarist) Eddie (Reyes) in the kitchen is a bad, bad man," he said. "He's got some talent. To be honest, Eddie and I were really running the kitchen that day."
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