| "I wanted to make an album that pushed the boundaries of power-pop and reflected the type of music I'd been listening to while living in Austria and Italy. I frequented many Viennese jazz clubs and found the best players to form the rhythm section. I wanted musicians who were used to playing a different style of music to see what they could bring to the project.” Earlier that year in Vienna, Rose had fatefully met Hector McDonald, the director of the horn section of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. That chance meeting allowed Rose to hire renowned Dutch classical composer, Rens Newland, to score the album and to use members of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra on the album. Rose continues, “Also, I found an accordion player at a little winery in the Vienna hills, a steel pedal player, a Greek opera singer and a German jazz vocalist." Over the course of fourteen months in the studio, Rose and Austrian co-producer Florian Manchek created Fresh Mowed Lawn. "When it came time to mix the album, we were confronted with up to seventy individual tracks on some songs. It was challenging to cull. We took a sculpture approach of chipping away at the tracks to find the most beautiful combinations.” |
