Swede emotion

The boys in the band are grilling on the back porch of guitarist Andrew Langer’s Wicker Park flat, an Otis Redding record is playing in the parlor and Redwalls’ bassist-singer Justin Baren is getting a few things off his chest about the band’s experience with that iconic imprint that once adorned Beatles and Beach Boys sleeves, Capitol Records. “The one thing about being on a major label, especially when you are so young, is that you fly out there and you think these people have it under control,” he says. “The one thing we learned is that nobody has anything under control.”

The band—which originated as a British Invasion cover act around the teenage Baren brothers, Justin and Logan, in Deerfield, under the name the Pages—honed its rock playing 2am slots at bars and at Nevin’s Live in Evanston. The group’s since toured with Oasis, but Justin waxes nostalgic over those glory days as residents of their very own Cavern Club.

After recording and touring on De Nova, its 2005 disc for Capitol, the group decided to take matters into its own hands for its next record. It recorded its third album, The Redwalls, in Malmö, Sweden, with Tore Johansson, a genius pop producer who’s styled records for Franz Ferdinand and Capitol labelmate OK Go. “We were a fan of him for years from when the Cardigans record came out with ‘Lovefool.’ That’s a really great record, it’s not just that one tune,” Justin says. “Everything that Tore does just sounds great.”

The Redwalls, the band’s first album that finds the quartet owning its prominent Beatles/Dylan/Stones/Kinks reference points and naturally recombining them rather than straightforwardly, if charmingly, appropriating them as it did on its debut, Universal Blues. There are lush harmonies, majestic sonics as on the unhurried shuffler “Little Sister,” martial strings on “In the Time of the Machine,” but also a convincing unsettled mood that brings it together. The brothers Baren sound impassioned, frustrated at points, and the tunes have an immediate fire that De Nova—painstakingly produced to a Hollywood sheen by Rob Schnapf—often lacked.

That may have a lot to do with the freshness of the new material. As Justin recounts, the Redwalls learned about song selection the hard way. Capitol pushed the band, just-out-of-high-school, to record older songs for De Nova, like the sentimental “Thank You,” written by a solo Logan at the age of 16. For months, the Redwalls found themselves touring on a single they’d long outgrown. “The main thing that we learned is that you record the things that you are into now,” Justin says. Luckily, the brothers have been on a writing tear. Logan, the group’s singer-guitarist, goes as far as to say, “The goal of this band is to constantly get out new material. I’m afraid of the day that will end.”

With 42 new songs in hand—Johansson helped the band choose 15 to record—the Redwalls worked 42 straight days on the album with only one day off. “We didn’t realize at the time, it’s a cultural thing in Sweden,” Justin says. “They’ll work as long as you wanna work, so if you want a day off, you have to tell them.” Seasoned by playing on the road, more than six months even before De Nova was released, the band freed itself from a Los Angeles digital producer’s best friend, the infernal click track. The Redwalls has the spontaneity of a live in-the-studio session, drummer Ben Greeno gels with the band, and guitarist Langer and Logan Baren trade solos and riffs liberally.

But the plan to get the record out in ’06 was thwarted when Capitol merged with Virgin and the group was released from its contract, but retained rights to its new album. The Redwalls is licensed to MAD Dragon, a student-run label funded by Drexel University in Philadelphia with distribution through Rykodisc. Still, the challenges haven’t let up—drummer Greeno, recently married, just left the band. The Redwalls just added their seventh drummer in seven years, Rob Jensen. But the lads don’t seem fazed.

As Logan explains, “In Sweden, they view Chicago as a really dangerous place. They’d say, God, you guys must be really tough. And we’re like, Yeah, we are.”

The Redwalls rolls into stores Tuesday 23. The band will play a CD-release party at Metro December 8.