WINDS OF CHANGE
Creative Adult’s latest album marks transition for members
Asmall run through the West. Then it’s off to Australia and the United Kingdom. And Scott Phillips is taking it all in stride. Sure, there is the stress of actually being on tour and away from home. But Phillips is welcoming it.
“Touring is kind of nice because you get to abandon your ‘real’ life at home,” he says during a recent phone interview. “I think of it as the classic Jack Kerouac thing. Traveling around in a van and gaining new experiences. It’s a beneficial thing for the mind, body and soul.”
Phillips is a member of the San Francsico-based alternative rock band Creative Adult. The band also consists of guitarists Michael Bingham and Anthony Anzaldo, bassist Mike Fenton and drummer James Rogers.
The band released its sophomore album, “Fear of Life,” on Aug. 5.
The journey to getting the album completed was a long one.
With false starts and delays, the band spent nearly two years writing and recording.
Phillips says the band calls the album a mix between abstract art and pop music.
He says the band pieced together 15 songs in the studio — though only nine made the cut.
“We spent less time practicing songs over and over and more time just forming rough skeletons so when we went into the studio we had a ton of material to play with,” he says.
The album was recorded fully analog, with instrumentation produced, engineered and mixed by Jack Shirley at The Atomic Garden in Palo Alto, Calif., and vocals with RJ Phillips at Grizzley Studios in Petaluma, Calif.
Phillips says the album came at a point of major transition for all of the members.
During the record process, each member individually grappled with death, addiction and tension in their personal lives, going through periods of immense personal change and transition.
“There was a lot of change going on,” he says. “We were trying to capture that and see what came out of it. I think the album allowed us to be more free in every aspect of making music. We’re getting a chance to perform this live and looking forward to seeing the response.”