High Planes Singer Celebrates New Album With Top-10 All-Time List

After the better part of a year writing, recording, and mixing High Planes is ready to release its newest album, “Sweet Vacancy.” The band appears on Season 4 of “Ocean State Sessions.” Ahead of the album’s release this fall, we checked in with Christian Caldarone about the record-making process, and tasked him with making a list of his 10 favorite albums.

Q: You’ve been working on a new album for quite some time. Can you tell us what it’s called, and what the process has been like making it?

A: It got started with rhythm track sessions and then we set it aside for five months or so. Once we jumped back into it, the rest of the tracking and mixing took another five months. One of the problems with taking such a long time is that new songs get introduced which adds even more time. One of the tracks on the album, “The Heaviest Feather,” was a last-minute idea that I decided to record in, basically, one guitar and one vocal take. You can actually hear a text message notification “ping” that we left in there since it is on the guitar track.

Our process for this album was that we multi-tracked all the instruments in my garage/studio space. Multi-tracking is essentially recording one instrument at a time. That process worked for us because it was practically impossible to coordinate all our schedules so that we could record in the studio together as a band. We then recorded the vocals and mixed everything at Jon Down’s home studio. Jon is a member of the band, The Brother Kite, and a close friend, who has done our previous two albums as well. The new album is called, “Sweet Vacancy.”

Q: When can people expect the album to come out?

A: We’ll be releasing this in October. The record release show is Oct. 19 at The Boiler Room in Olneyville. We don’t have a precise release date for the album yet, probably a few days before as it depends on the delivery date of the vinyl. I anticipate a couple of digital single releases leading up to it as well.

Q: What was influencing you the most when making this album? Had you been listening to any music that inspired you for it?

A: I actually started writing many of the songs on the album during a two-week road trip with my family. So the influence was really more of what I was experiencing with our relationships in such close proximity, rather than anything I was listening to. When I write, I tend to get obsessive and don’t listen to lot of other stuff. I started writing “Falling” at the TWA Hotel in New York and continued it in every motel and campsite along the way.

I also co-wrote two of the songs with friends. One with my long-time collaborator and High Planes bass player, Jeremy Sencer, and the other with friend, poet and teacher, Jason Ryan. Jeremy came (up) with the chord progression for the verses to “Fine Place on My Own” and I finished it up. For “War of Sundays” I had the music and the title. Jason came over and during the course of an evening hang, we sketched out the rest of the story which was based on an experience he had in a previous job. In the morning I put the notes together and it was finished. I had been struggling for months with that one.

Two of the songs on the album are actually written by other band members. Annie’s Never Enough is a beautiful piano ballad and Greg’s Got Me Moving is an infectious, uptempo number. Those are two of the album’s highlights. They all fit together as a quasi-concept album about an intense relationship between two people. Originally, I had the arc of a relationship from “beginning to end” in the song order, but I abandoned that and the story is now non-linear in nature, which is probably closer to real experience anyway.

To celebrate “Sweet Vacancy,” Caldarone compiled his list of his 10 favorite albums. Like most musicians, Caldarone mulled over many choices, but was able to narrow it down to the following albums. Here’s what Caldarone had to say about the list:

“I’ll preface all this by saying it is tough to choose one album from my favorite artists and bands, but I will stick to one for each,” Caldarone said. “I am also considering these all my favorites and not necessarily putting them in order (from) 1-10.”

“Death Vessel is a Rhode Island band that recorded this gorgeous record in Iceland and released on the Sub Pop label. I loved DV from the first time I heard a recording in a friend’s studio. It is one of those albums that my family can sing along to in its entirety, which we have done many times on long car rides.”

“Featuring songs about aliens, drag queens, and Bob Dylan, and including autobiographical references to Bowie’s childhood, siblings and experiences as a new parent, ‘Hunky Dory’ is a wide-ranging album in both musical style and lyrical content. It also has one of the best Glam Rock bangers of its generation, Queen Bitch; quite possibly the best pop song ever written, ‘Life on Mars'; and one of my all-time favorite lyrics, ‘Don’t tell them to grow up and out of it /Where’s the shame you left us up to our necks in it?’ Changes, indeed.”

“I love this album so much and it’s another one (that) connects with my entire family. This may be the best distillation of early teen angst, confusion and power since Big Star’s, ”Thirteen,” which is made all the more real by the fact Lorde was only 15 when this album was released. To me the lyrics reflect a 14-year-old’s tender and raw perspective of the disconnected modern world. There’s serious wisdom on this album. Amazing.”

“The perfect blend of poetry, music and mysticism. VM worked out these songs in Boston with local rock musicians, but the record company made him lose that band and record it with New York jazz players. Turned out that was the right choice, as these songs are all transcendent and make me feel like I am in another world completely unstuck from time. It may be the most aptly named album in the pantheon.”

“With themes of suburban decay, alcoholism, detachment, and convenience replacing meaning in modernity, PLUS music that ricochets like audible bipolar disorder, this album is a stark masterpiece. So ‘Let’s all have another Orange Julius’ because ‘this plane is definitely crashing …'”

“This album’s first track slowly builds in tension which continues through the airy release of the final song, ‘Sunday Roast.’ Courtney Barrett’s lyrics are self-conscious and cut deeply, her stories are personal and universal and it’s nearly impossible to stop listening to the album once it’s started. It doesn’t even include my favorite CB song, ‘Avant Gardener.’”

“‘The Soft Bulletin’ and companion, ‘Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots,’ were given to me together by a friend who said, ‘These will change your life.’ The layered synth work and sequences that underpinned the compositions pointed me in a direction that eventually grew into my former band, Steadystate. The spectacle and pure joy of The Flaming Lips’ live shows only enhance the listening experience of these powerful albums. Is there any better song than ‘Waitin’ for a Superman’ to capture the struggle of modern life?”

“For me, Stevie Wonder’s records in the early to mid-70s constitute the greatest run of albums by a single artist in American contemporary music. ‘Talking Book,’ ‘Inner Visions’ and ‘Songs in the Key of Life’ are all essential. The cymbal work alone on ‘Too High’ is practically enough to name this album a classic, not to mention the unforgettable songs, like the devastating, ‘Living For The City’ or the playful, ‘Don’t You Worry About A Thing.’ Stevie is a national treasure.

“This is the album where The Beatles’ evolution as songcrafters was most pronounced. Maturing songwriting met evolving studio techniques and the result is pure pop glory. Take the fact that this is (the) greatest band of all time out of the equation and this is still one of the best albums ever made.”

“Paul Westerberg is my favorite songwriter and this album is a masterpiece of lovelorn innocence, exuberance, vulnerable idealism and ultimately jaundiced, self-awareness. ‘Oooh if you knew how I felt now/you wouldn’t act so adult now/Hurry, hurry, here comes my stop/Kiss me on the bus.’ Hopeful, yet sad because you just know the object of his affection doesn’t even know who he is pining for them in the back of the bus — incredible.”

Check out High Planes’ performance on Season 4 of “Ocean State Sessions” in the video above, and a preview of their upcoming album “Sweet Vacancy.”