On 'Sorry Vampire,' Ralston becomes a studio monster

John Ralston's layered new disc explodes the boundaries of his earlier work. He says the new album, "Sorry Vampire," ignores the things "that can really suck the life out of a project." (Andrew Paynter)

Unlike the layers of mud caked on John Ralston's car windshield making it nearly impossible to see the road, and the scrape of wipers making it tough to hear anything else, the layered beds of sound on Ralston's latest album, "Sorry Vampire," allow you to hear more and more all the time.

"There's tons of snow here, and a truck just blasted me with mud," the 30-year-old singer-songwriter explains en route from Wyoming to Colorado for a show. "I can't really see, so it definitely makes the drive a little bit exciting."

Not wanting to contribute to a road mishap, I prepare to shed about five layers of questions from our chat. But Ralston is in a gregarious mood, ready to talk about why and how the opulent, lushly textured "Sorry Vampire" came about.

"On 'Needle Bed,' I wasn't even really intending to make a record," Ralston says of his mostly acoustic 2005 debut. "The idea was to get out of town for a couple of days and record some songs with a friend of mine. I immediately became interested in [the recording process] and the question of how we can build on this sound, and spend more time on it, and really layer."

Really layer is right. "Beautiful Disarmed," a sad, striking ballad that resembles some of the late songwriter Elliott Smith's gorgeously fragile work, is embedded with 20 vocal tracks. Floating together amid synthesized strings and accents of piano, they sound ethereal and endless. The tune eventually drifts and dissipates before a full, flowering bloom of electric guitars announces the next track, "No One Loves You Like I Do."

Before "Sorry Vampire," Ralston claims, "I really didn't have experience in the studio." Working again with "Needle Bed" co-producer Michael Seaman and Grammy-winning mixer Charles Dye "really opened my eyes about what we could do in the studio. I realized that we could really push the boundaries of what I had done before and experiment." Hence the title of the latest album.

"['Sorry Vampire'] was about ignoring the different things that can really suck the life out of a project, and keeping really focused on making something unique," says Ralston. "The goal was making something you could listen to over and over again, and you'd hear something new each time. I think we did that."

Dye was stunned when he began working with Ralston again. "It was apparent to me really quickly that his whole vocabulary about engineering and mixing had increased tremendously," says Dye, who has mixed albums for Aerosmith and Lauryn Hill, among others. "It had been two years almost [since 'Needle Bed'], but I've never experienced somebody coming into the studio not really knowing much of anything and then coming back and knowing so much. I didn't expect it, but he had clearly done his homework."

In keeping with his desire to experiment, Ralston recorded "Fragile," the track that leads off "Vampire," with ex-Wilco multi-instrumentalist and noted studio junkie Jay Bennett. "He's obviously a talent and a tireless worker," says Ralston. "There would be times when I would be exhausted and crash out at 2 or 3 in the morning and he'd keep going."

Ralston has since become something of a studio junkie himself. He has built a home studio and is about to release an EP, "White Spiders," that marks the first time Ralston has written, recorded, produced, and mixed all of the tracks. But his newfound fascination being "behind the board," as he puts it, is merely a new twist on an old love. Ralston regularly sang at Sunday gatherings with his extended family in Florida.

"Music was always around when I was growing up," he says. "It seems kind of antiquated when I talk about it now, but singing with a group of people was really fun. I remember listening to my mom's old records like Neil Young's 'Harvest' and the Byrds and the Band, but I didn't think about playing or writing my own songs until I was about 16. One day I had my mom teach me a few chords. She's a guitar player - she's still better than I am."