Dan Auerbach vs. Helene Smith

Dan Auerbach does a fine job with Helene Smith's "A Woman Will Do Wrong" on his new Arcs album Electrophonic Chronic - but it's tough to top Irma Thomas.

Here's the scoop on Dan Auerbach's new Arcs album...

The Arcs just released their first full length album since 2015, Electrophonic Chronic, featuring the band’s full line-up of Dan Auerbach, Leon Michels, Nick Movshon and Homer Steinweiss, alongside the late Richard Swift. Also featuring artwork from their collaborator, El Oms, and animated videos from Robert "Roboshobo" Schober, the album has been met with advance praise from NPR Music, Billboard, Rolling Stone, and more. Esquire notes the album is "…a woozy mix of synth pop, celestial guitar riffs and plodding rhythm sections that feels like driving a Ford Bronco through the cosmos." You can get a copy of The Arcs new Electrophonic Chronic album via Easy Eye Sound right here. Check the link below for the full Dan Auerbach interview in Esquire. 

 

Co-produced by Michels and Auerbach, Electrophonic Chronic was largely recorded with Swift before his untimely passing in 2018. After a period where, as Michels puts it, "I think all of us couldn’t really listen to the music, couldn’t really face it and try to finish it," The Arcs revisited their old recordings, picking up the pieces and finding meaning in times that felt most difficult. “This new record is all about honoring Swift," Auerbach adds. "It’s a way for us to say goodbye to him, by revisiting him playing and laughing, singing. It was heavy at times, but I think it was really helpful to do it.” 

 

Born of the band's mutual obsession with recording and crate-digging, Electrophonic Chronic pulls inspiration from vast sonic archives: vintage soul – featured on the album is a gender-flipped cover of the would-be South Florida star Helene Smith's, A Woman Will Do Wrong (listen to both versions along with a stellar version Irma Thomas cut at Muscle Shoals below) – to old school garage rock,  including the album’s namesake "Electrophonic Tonic," the once-lost gem from Fred "Sonic" Smith and Sonic's Rendezvous Band, and the space age pop made famous by producer Joe Meek in the pre-Beatles 1960s. The record is a tribute to the shared passion that originally brought the three bandmates together. 

 

Auerbach and Michels have also been spinning selects from those sonic archives in a series of intimate DJ sets across London and Paris, plus upcoming shows in New York (Brooklyn's Sultan Room on January 28th) and Los Angeles (Gold Diggers w/ DJ Breezy on February 3rd). 

The pair also recently sat down with Vulture for a dive further into the multifaceted inspirations of Electrophonic Chronic, in a piece that breaks down newly-released, Only One For Me, co-written by two indie rock greats gone-too-soon in David Berman and Richard Swift, alongside Auerbach and Michels. Check it out here.

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Esquire Dan Auerbach knows it when he hears it