Nashville garage-rock duo Jeff the Brotherhood must be pretty big fans of Norman. Next Wednesday’s show marks its third here in less than a year.
But it won’t be more of the same, as it also marks Jeff the Brotherhood’s first since releasing Hypnotic Nights, the band’s seventh studio album and first through Warner Bros. Records, home to The Flaming Lips.
“They were the only label that wanted to be a part of what we were doing regardless,” singer/guitarist Jake Orrall said. “We weren’t looking for a record deal. They just kind of handed us one.”
He and brother Jamin long had handled their own affairs, founding Infinity Cat Recordings to self-release music under the watchful eye of their father, industry veteran Robert Ellis Orrall.
After 2009’s Heavy Days started exposing Jeff the Brotherhood to a wider audience, Warner Bros. consequently agreed to distribute last year’s We Are the Champions and took the lead on Hypnotic Nights.
“We’ve found that now that we have people behind us, we can do a shitload more with our music,” Jake Orrall said. “There’s so many people working for us and with us, coming up with cool ways to promote what we are doing. It’s much more fun, doing these big music videos. Everything is easier and a lot more effective.”
Few things have been as effective as playing Late Show with David Letterman.
“It was pretty bizarre, knowing that millions of people are watching you,” Jake Orrall said. “The most people we’d ever played for before was maybe 8,000. That’s a pretty big leap.”
More than anything, however, the siblings appreciated the chance to take their time recording Hypnotic Nights.
“We had access to a lot more cool instruments and better musicians,” Jake said. “We had a lot more time, too, since we weren’t having to pay the rent for the studio.
It gave us a lot more time to write and tweak things.”
They were joined in-studio by Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys, not only their first producer, but the first time Auerbach made an attempt at producing.
“It’s easy to get lost in your own artistic vision. Having someone in the room to bounce stuff off of is such a help,” Orrall said. “It’s like, ‘Why had we never thought of these things before?’”
This article appears in Sep 19-25, 2012.