Greater California are making one of those records

PHOTO by JENNIE WARREN

This coming Greater California record is taking some time, but the public demands satisfaction. The big questions he gets, says bassist/vocalist Nick Benich, are “Are you still a band?” and “Are you still working on that album?” And somewhere along Redondo, singer/guitarist Terry Prine was going about his normal day and the Paper Planes—a worthy Long Beach band themselves—yelled from a moving car: “Finish that thing already!” So the people (as they say) have spoken. (“From a car window,” adds Terry.)

But this is also (or will be) a record that used well the time it took. Greater California might be peaking right now: this is their first album with drummer Greg Brown (also augmenting Blank Blue, profiled elsewhere in this special all-Greg Brown issue) and guitarist/singer Chris Berens joining original pianist/keyboardist Kari Prine (as well as the first album without bongos, says Terry, because “Greg hates bongos”) and the first album with four songwriters involved at max capacity. Everyone—even the traditionally neglected drummer (a bad habit that goes back to the Beatles)—gets to push and pull at songs now. It’s a failsafe surplus of taste and experience that details the new Greater California songs down to their deepest levels. As it is, says Greg, the existing album tracks are almost above where the band is live—arranged with such complexity that they can’t be reproduced on stage. (Wasn’t that another Beatles thing?) But, says Terry confidently, they will figure something out.

“The record will stand,” he says. “The recorded piece is what matters.”

“That’s the legacy,” says Chris.

“The live shows have their moments,” says Terry. “But you’ll always have that record.”

And when it comes out, it will be a pretty proud record—the best so far in Greater California’s already formidable discography. As pre-release burns of 2005’s Somber Wurlitzer made the rounds, remembers Chris, who then worked at Fingerprints, a reverent co-worker told him, ‘Chris, this is gonna be one of THOSE records.’ And this new one even more so, I’d say. Like the bands who live on in Pebbles compilations—where Nick hopes Greater California ends up by the time record collectors are nostalgic and curious for 2007—that wrote hits for way ahead of their time, Greater California have a certain sense for permanence. This new and untitled album enjoys striking and flattering production by Ikey Owens, who “pushed us in ways we haven’t been pushed before,” says Terry. “He kind of made us think of everything in a different way—kind of revolutionary, we were thinking”—and finds (or will find) Greater California at a new best.

“We’ve got a greater variety of nostalgia,” says Greg, unanimously voted the “most modern” member by bandmates in unanimous love with the meticulous psych-pop of the ’60s. Terry even volunteers 1967 as his personal favorite, the year of Surrealistic Pillow and Sgt. Pepper’s and Forever Changes and Odyssey and Oracle, as well as the year Smile should have been released and the year Emitt Rhodes signed to A&M.

There are lessons learned from all those landmarks in the new songs—Terry’s Wilsonian “the moment comes that makes me feel real” on “Them the Downs,” or Zombies-nodding piano/drums intro on “All the Colors,” or a dizzy and difficult bank of vocal harmonies on an unknown song that I heard right out of Ikey’s stereo. But it’s less nostalgic than reverent, craft in an idiom so endlessly challenging it drove a few composers back to bed. And maybe it’s modern Greg (who mentions Wilco in every interview I’ve done with him) or Chris (an avowed Alex Chilton fan) at work, but the new songs brush something off the right recent references, too, like an outro that could be the Spacemen or the Telescopes at their dreamiest.

This will be a record by pop scholars who’ve got all the answers. And it will be out . . . sometime soon. Maybe fall, maybe spring. This {open} show will be their first live set since March and marks just about nine months since they started writing the new record. They started recording on Labor Day last year, says Nick, laughing at how they can lose track of time while they’re working. “You know,” he says, “it doesn’t seem that long ago.”

GREATER CALIFORNIA WITH MATT DEATH AND THE NEW INTELLECTUALS AND WAYNE EVERETT (FROM LASSIE FOUNDATION) AND FRIENDS {OPEN} | 2226 E FOURTH ST | LONG BEACH 90804 | ACCESSOPEN.COM | SAT 8 PM | $5 | ALL AGES