MANSFIELD — Things are looking up for Narrow / Arrow, the only Mansfield-area band signed to a record label.
The album, ClaustrOHphobia, is expected to be be released in June.
“We are trying to go all out with the different places we send it to, Pitchfork, Spin, Vice, whatever,” said Cody Nicholas, the band’s vocalist and guitarist. “In order to get yourself looked at — it’s in a lot of people hands.”
The band got together in 2013. They were signed by Other People Records in Orange County in 2015.
The band’s first full-length album centers around living in Mansfield and Nicholas’ reflections during his shifts at Relax, It’s Just Coffee, where he works.
“You’re close quarters with just everybody,” he said of the songs on ClaustrOHphobia. “Feeling happy about it; feeling sad about it. Feeling congested a lot of the time.”
On one tune, Nicholas said there is an acoustic guitar under a cacophony of alcohol-influenced conversations at The ClubHouse bar captured on his cell phone.
“It’s not just a song,” he said explaining the experimental movement. “It paints a picture sonically of claustrophobia. Kind of feeling close quarters with everybody.”
Nicholas said he writes the lyrics and guitar parts for his three-member band.
The 10-track record will be mastered by Howie Weinberg, a “master masterer,” Nicholas said.
He has mixed albums for Aerosmith’s 1985 Done with Mirrors, Nirvana’s 1991 Nevermind, Muse’s 2006 Black Holes and Revelations, Jeff Buckley’s 1994 Grace, and many others. Weinberg has been nominated for a Grammy four times.
“He’s the guy. The mastering process is lacquer on a wooden chair,” Nicholas said. “It’s the complete finish. It fills in all the cracks, smoothes everything out matches all the decibels level and volume.”
How did a band with a small record label get such a big name on its album?
“It’s kind of a funny story,” Nicholas said, which a large grin. “We didn’t spend any of the record money making the album because Jonathan Hape (ex-drummer of Narrow Arrow) does it. He’s an audio engineer. So we lucked out.
“With the money we had for the budget, I was like, ‘let’s throw it at some huge name to master it.’ People take you seriously when there’s a big name on it.”
The band made a list of their top 10 favorite albums. Three of their top five were mastered by Weinberg.
“I looked him up and he just has an email,” he continued.
Ten minutes after the email, Weinberg called Other People Records.
Later, the record label contacted Nicholas with news.
“He wants to do it,” they told him.
As it turned out, Weinberg and Other People Records were 10 minutes apart.
“He’s a manic, cool kind of dude,” Nicholas said.
Within three days, the album was returned mixed.
Nicholas said Narrow / Arrow has to wait for a music video to be produced on their new single before the album can be released. When it is released, he hopes it could go international, but he realizes the band is at the mercy of music magazines.
“This is the next step for the band to try and break out,” Nicholas said. “As much as that is a clichè term, it really happens like that.
“(It’s) the difference between making this something you do on the weekend to having flood gates open and getting more opportunities. It’s a snowball effect.”
