New Deep, how'd you make it?
How did I make New Deep? I recorded it as a demo in my studio first. Most of the songs from this record were recorded in my studio in my apartment. And it started out with this guitar part and this beat, and then a bassline, and it all really came together very fast. And I just remember tracking it in my studio and the song really being there already. I loved the verse, I loved the feel, I loved the B section. And so even the moment that I was playing it in my studio, I think it was a defined song.
The chorus didn't really come about 'til the very end of that tune. But I loved playing it. I still love playing it. I love being onstage and feeling that thing under my hands, just the way the chords are laid out, and the feel. It really defines a new signature way that I wanna be heard, in terms of the pulse and the groove of the tune.
[...]
It sounds like New Deep kind of came easy to you. Is there a song that was difficult, that zigged when you wanted to zag or zagged when you wanted to zig?
Yeah, as a matter of fact Daughters was like that. Daughters began as a demo that was actually more of an R&B tune, and it had a 6/8 kind of soul feel to it. It just ended up so plodding. I remember we had to record that so many times.
Sometimes when a song is really great as a tune, it's, in some very zen way, incredibly hard to track. Your Body Is A Wonderland on Room For Squares is a song that was so easy to me, in terms of the way it was written, and it just came, and it was: "this is gonna be great."
Sometimes when you know something is gonna be great, it serves as the real weakness in getting it done because you know every step of the way that you have to uphold the expectation of what you know this is going to be. And that was the biggest brick wall of the recording of that record.
We recorded it as a soul tune with full drums. And Questlove from The Roots, who plays on Clarity, actually played on Daughters. And I think Steve Jordan, who's a fantastic drummer, came in and played on it. Everybody tried it. You know, the song was never meant to be acoustic, but everybody came in and tried to do that song, and it just wasn't working. I remember saying to Jack Joseph Puig who produced the record: "I bet you anything this song's just gonna be acoustic."