Photo credit: Rachel Schlawin
As Mitchell Bell sees it, there’s a mistake that far too many musicians make. They get so excited about their music that they begin releasing it long before they’ve refined and perfected it. It’s a mistake, he says, that his brother Maxwell and he and were determined to avoid with the debut album from their psych-rock project, Blue Sails.
“We at no point wanted to jeopardize our credibility as musicians by promoting something that wasn’t ready,” Mitchell says, adamantly. “Our whole mindset for our entire album is we need to get this absolutely perfect, and we need to plan 16 steps ahead and months into the future to get everything absolutely right.”
While some bands begin posting music online within months, or even weeks, of forming, the Bell brothers took the other extreme. They spent five rigorous years writing, recording, dissecting and tweaking Blue Sails’ self-titled debut and spent another year trying to prepare for its release.
The recording process was grueling by design. The brothers spent countless days and nights sequestered in their basement studio, deliberately distancing themselves from any outside influence. The two composed their songs following a methodical seven-step writing process they outlined on a whiteboard (yes, a whiteboard was involved), and abided by a regimented work ethic that Maxwell picked up through years of playing collegiate soccer.
“He had to force his body to do things most people would never think about, like waking up at 4:30 a.m. and taking an ice bath before heading to a field in September, breaking his bones on the brittle ground,” Mitchell says. “Hard work is the number one most important attribute of anybody who wants to succeed at anything.”
The brothers banked on the belief that all that extra effort would show in the final product. For Mitchell, it was almost a matter of simple math: The more you put in, the more you get in return.
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“Say somebody made a great record that they only spent two years on, controlling for their skill set and other variables,” he argues. “Then, say somebody else with the same set of skills spends four years on their album and loves and nitpicks every detail; just imagine the relative replay value that work with the extra two years is going to have.”
I don’t fully buy his argument. The Ramones only spent a week recording their debut album, and it’s hard to imagine how an extra week, let alone an extra four years, could have improved on it. But in the Bell brothers’ case it worked: Blue Sails is an uncommonly rich, luscious set of soulful psychedelia filled beyond the margins with fascinating colors and textures. All the extra effort shows. At various moments, the record is recalls the feats of Pink Floyd, Spiritualized, My Bloody Valentine and countless other acts that logged unthinkable hours in their studios. The album is only eight songs and 37 minutes—not a lot of music to show for the thousands of hours of labor they invested—but you can get lost in it.
Now that the album is finally out in the world, Mitchell says he feels a sense of freedom. “For years, I was shackled to this weird ball and chain that was this album, but now I’m free to move on to the next thing,” he says. “Now we get to take what we’ve learned and make something that’s so much better.”
Blue Sails’ debut album is streaming on Apple Music, Spotify and SoundCloud, among other services. Physical copies are available through thebluesails.com.
