Turn on ‘The Charmer’

It took a few decades, but Toadies finally got to make a record with Steve Albini. The Charmer is one of the last yet-to-be-released projects of the late, great, famously meticulous, notoriously cantankerous musician/audio engineer recorded at his Electrical Audio studio in Chicago before his death in May 2024. Toadies’ eighth studio effort drops on Friday, May 1, via Austin-based Spaceflight Records, and its 13 songs are a testament to two inarguable facts: The sonics on Steve Albini-produced records are nearly always superior to the sonics on non-Steve Albini-produced records, and Toadies have been a vital rock band for 37 years because they seem to have no shortage of brain-spearing guitar riffs and anxious, singalong hooks.

“From Record 1, we always wanted to work with Albini,” said Vaden Todd Lewis, Toadies’ founding vocalist, guitarist, and primary songwriter, in a statement that also included this interesting bit of trivia from drummer Mark Reznicek: “When we first signed with the major label back in 1993, they asked us who we wanted to record with, and we all replied, ‘Albini!’ But they immediately vetoed that choice for whatever reason.”

In a Zoom call, Lewis and Reznicek described how the record came to be and how, lyrically, it’s a highly personal document for Lewis. But the band also financed The Charmer themselves after their accountant, Vaden’s wife Rachel Stas Lewis, budgeted the album’s recording costs into the revenues of a couple tours that preceded preproduction. In total, The Charmer is a record made on Lewis and company’s own terms.

“We started writing this record years ago,” Lewis said. “During the lockdown and all that stuff is when the meat of it started.”

When lockdown ended, a friend of the band, producer Frenchie Smith, came up from Austin to demo Lewis, Reznicek, bassist Donivan Blair, and guitarist Clark Vogeler at The Loop, the rehearsal complex in east Fort Worth which Lewis owns.

“We had songs, bits and pieces, a ton of material,” Lewis recalled. “A couple of songs were completed, and Frenchie came up and brought a giant mixer and a bunch of recording gear, and we set it all up in the hourly room of The Loop and did preproduction for a week at a time for two or three sessions.”

Their goal was to have the material locked in tight before going into a studio and tracking to expensive magnetic tape.

“We know we’re on tape,” Lewis said. “We know we have X number of dollars, X number of hours, [and] tape, and we’re gonna knock this shit out and get it. And so that’s what we did.”

For a guitarist, the availability of Albini’s collection of amps and guitars (Lewis: “I was told [I used] the guitar that [Kurt] Cobain played on In Utero”) is itself a dream come true. Between those and Chicago’s numerous and fabled guitar stores, the sessions were a blast for resident guitar geek Vogeler. But even with overdubs, the album sounds like what it is: four people in a room together bashing out high-gain guitar crunch.

Lewis’ lyrics sound more direct this time around. In “Come to Life,” over an acoustic guitar, he sings, “I feel like a ghost / I know I’m not the only one,” and when Vogeler’s electric crashes into your ears, the bewildered frustration in that line hits hard — as if the four previous studio albums have been leading up to this one. The drums and guitars sound like you’re sitting in the room with them, and the time signatures make you feel weird, as do lines like “I wanted to hear everything at the same time / I wanted to think the thoughts of the hive mind / I started to change / I started growing / All ugly and strange / All beauty and glowing” (“I Wanted to Be Everywhere”).

In album closer “In Bandages,” Lewis “was looking on the bright side” until a lover “came on like a sharp knife.” On much of The Charmer, the frontman gazes at the darkness of the past, but the fact that he’s doing that in the here and now rather than in the great hereafter is the darkness’ unspoken corollary.

I asked the obligatory question that goes to every band that’s three decades old or older: When you were a new band, did you ever imagine the spot you’re in now?

“Not for a second,” Lewis said. “My fallback was gonna be going back to being a manager at a record store, but in all seriousness, a lot of this record was written about real serious shit, and part of that we’re talking about right now is I had no plan to live long enough to get …,” he paused. “You know, that was not … in the works for me. So, part of this record is about dealing with those thoughts and getting help and getting, you know, medication therapy and whatnot to try to get those thoughts under control, so when I talk about my brain, is it in a better place? Yeah, for sure. But, I mean, you know, seriously, I went hard, like, back in the day. I thought, ‘Well, this will be a good story,’ and then I’d wake up the next day, and I’m like, ‘Shit, OK, so, uh, try again tomorrow.’ ”

Depression and mental-health struggles are personally important subjects for Lewis, but this is the first time he’s addressed them on an album so pointedly. May is Mental Health Awareness month, and the band is partnering with the late Daniel Johnston’s Hi, How Are You Project, a nonprofit dedicated to educating young people about the importance of mental health, inspired by Johnston’s life and music.

Of course, this being a Toadies album, the darkness of The Charmer’s subject matter is mirrored by the tension in every melody and guitar lead, so even when Lewis explores an uncomfortable memory, his thoughts are borne on ear-wormy, off-kilter, headbanging riffage. Lewis and his bandmates are very proud of their new album, which they’ll promote this year with a nationwide tour that begins Thursday in Abilene, comes through Dallas’ Longhorn Ballroom this Saturday, and goes through the end of October.

“I guess every band says, ‘This is our best record’ because it’s the new one that they’re promoting,” Lewis said. “But I feel so good about it. It came out really well, and it’s a time capsule because of those sessions [with Albini]. … It’s not perfect, and that’s what I love about it, and there was not a single computer used in any step of the way until mastering. … There are some, some warts in there that just make it … really the sound of people getting in a room and doing a thing.”

Toadies

Sat, May 2, at Longhorn Ballroom, 216 Corinth St, Dallas. 214-272-8346.