Portsmouth’s premier pop rockers drop album number two 

If you hang out with The Whatnot, it’s easy to see that they’re good pals. Inside jokes, goofiness and quick wit punctuate our interview, and frontman Pat Curry remarks to his two bandmates how good it is to see them, as it’s the first time they’ve been together since he left for his honeymoon. Good vibes and genuine friendliness abound, and there’s good reason for the cheer in The Whatnot camp beyond the 27-year-old Curry’s recent nuptials. The band is releasing their sophomore CD, “One More for Pocket” at The Press Room this week, on Friday, July 21.

While their fine 2003 debut “What You Make of It” featured what amounted to the band’s live sound (in other words, some whirlwind tracking and mixing with few “overdubs”), they took a little bit more of a laid back approach on this recording and booked a luxurious 13 days of tracking with engineer Jonathan Wyman of Portland. Wyman, who engineered their first record, too, has been making a name for himself recording artists like As Fast As and Pete Kilpatrick, not to mention the demos that got Ray LaMontagne signed.

In the age of the home recording boom where every musician can get some software and make it happen, spending almost two weeks laying down songs in a real studio, without label backing, really is treating yourself. But there’s something to be said for not fooling around with your computer at home, trying to record. Sometimes it’s just good to think about the music.

“The first record we did we tracked in literally four days,” says percussionist Chris Mathews. “We just wanted to give ourselves enough time where if we were like ‘We’re done with this song. Buuuut... this would be nice in there.’ We didn’t want to have a time crunch saying we can’t put that in there.”

The trademark Whatnot pop sound is still intact, despite added instrumentation and production ideas that find their way onto “One More for Pocket.” Curry’s looped acoustic guitar parts, Matt Junkin’s hooky bass and Mathews’ dizzying congas/bongos/cymbals/shaker still hold down the fort, and their three-part harmonies and catchy melodies continue to set them apart. Organs, accordions, ukulele (courtesy of Melvern Taylor), jingle bells, mandolin, electronic drums, and even Pat’s new Casio keyboard provide sonic textures that weave into the songs and glue them together nicely.

“When we play a song live we do it one way, but we wanted to explore the limits of the song as to how it could really be,” Mathews says. These additions give fans one reason to see the band live, and another to listen on their stereo or iPod, as Junkin points out.

“We wanted to make the take home game exciting in its own respect. A live show is going to be exciting anyway ’cause you get to look at our pretty faces,” says the 27-year-old with a dry smile.

“I don’t think (anyone) will miss anything in the live show,” Junkin continues (somewhat) more seriously. “Pat can loop live and put a lot of those hooks that are there, but the core is still gonna kick ass live.”

Upon the release of their debut, The Whatnot hit the road with a vengeance, touring as far south as Atlanta and Nashville and as far west as Chicago, playing college gigs, club and bar gigs—pretty much any kind of show imaginable—and racking up more than 250 appearances. Lately, they’ve favored less road work and seem happy to be exploring more studio time. They’re planning to get right back into the studio with new songs immediately.

“As a songwriter, when you write a song, you can start to hear the orchestra play and the other instruments start playing the parts. You can hear all these other things come in,” says Curry, who usually writes a song before tossing it to the band for tweaking. “So, one of the things that I wanted to do was take some of what I hear in my head and put it down on wax. In that respect, it was definitely a success.”

The song “Fought It All the Way” features Curry’s soaring voice and his bandmates’ equally rich vocal support as a reverb-drenched organ floats in the background. Toward the end, the band switches gears and changes the feel from a loping waltz to a driving four four beat, accompanied by a huge chorus. “Dive” is pure Whatnot, a chiming acoustic guitar hook with Junkin and Mathews grooving along “in the pocket” before another clinic on fine melodies and harmonies. Longtime Whatnot fans won’t be disappointed, and new fans will most certainly be following.

But after all the live shows they played over the last two years, it took a little while to shift back into “album mode.”
“We spread out tracking,” says Junkin. “We did three days tracking and then we took seven weeks off, had plenty of time to practice and listen to reference mixes on our own. A few different harmonies came out of that.”

Curry agrees that it was a helpful way to work.

“(After our first album) we went through two and a half years of playing live,” he says. “Now we have 10 songs that we want to record on a record... but we’re a live band, we’re not a studio band. We had to kinda relearn how to do that, so when we laid these basics down and we had all this time to think about it, (then) we were becoming a studio band because we were rethinking how the songs were structured.”

Death Cab for Cutie’s “Plans” CD and the latest album from Coldplay inspired the band to dig in and use the studio as an extra instrument, to really make a great studio record. “And the sequel to ‘Operation Mindcrime’ by Queensryche,” adds Junkin, who gets a laugh before everybody realizes he’s serious. The ribbing ensues.

It’s refreshing to see some guys who have been playing together for a while and still truly enjoy being around one another. It’s something that has always shone through their music, and their live shows, too.

“What I said when we sat down with Jon (Wyman) at Rosie’s in Portland was, ‘We want to make an art project,’” says Curry. “We wanted to do something that we were really psyched about, but that we don’t really give a crap about what anybody else thinks.”