John Maus, “Believer” (2011)
find it on We Must Become The Pitiless Censors Of Ourselves

Production has always fascinated me. In my high school years, it fascinated me because I didn’t know what the hell it was. As I pored over the liner notes, I saw that every album had a credit for production, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what it had to do with anything. It wasn’t until after I had recorded an album of my own and gotten to college and had someone explain to me that what I had done was essentially production. That is, that a better title for the job is “decider”: choosing what instruments, effects and direction to take with the music.

Songs like “Believer” make the concept of production a little clearer. At the base of the song is a gorgeous melody that could have gone down any number of musical paths, but it’s presented with equally-gorgeous cascading synths, and vocals that are so reverbed out and delayed they sound like they’re just now getting to you from decades ago. You have to wade through the fog to get to the song, but once you get to it, the thickness of it sounds as beautiful as the song hidden below, and it’s clear that every sound here is a decision.