Punk, grunge, and Christmas dinner with Sparklehorse: An underdog's history of Smart Studios

Known as the house that Nirvana's Nevermind once stopped in at (and less so for the hundreds of other relevant records made there), Smart Studios is a long-standing monument to the symbiotic relationship between pop music and Madison, Wis.—or at least it was, until last week. As of March 1, Smart has shut its doors. While a vast decline in business and the rise of home-recording software put Smart underwater, this studio did its best to keep its hands full until the very end.

When The A.V. Club came to Smart to wander around for one last time (and drool over the studio's expansive collection of analog synthesizers and vintage guitar pedals), we could hear engineer Beau Sorenson tweaking the mix of an as-yet untitled album from Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin. The band had recently tracked at Smart with Sorenson, sharing the production helm Death Cab For Cutie guitarist (and producer) Chris Walla. Apparently, the two began sporadically working on records together when Walla took Death Cab’s sixth album (and major-label debut), 2005's Plans, to Smart for mixing. “It was basically Chris and I just going crazy for over a month," Sorenson says. "There was definitely some insanity for a while. There were all of these deadlines in place, and Chris was the biggest name I had ever worked with, so I was super nervous.”

Of course, Sorenson is the last in a long line of engineers who cut their teeth working on big projects at Smart. From founders Steve Marker, Butch Vig, and Duke Erikson to current chief engineer Mike Zirkel, the responsibility for studio’s success is well distributed. The walls are crawling with LPs, CDs, and awards for the gold and platinum sales of albums like Nirvana’s Nevermind, Smashing Pumpkins’ Gish, Fall Out Boy’s Take This To Your Grave, the first two Garbage albums, and even the Romeo + Juliet soundtrack (which featured the Garbage hit “#1 Crush”). However, as we read between the accolades, we couldn't help but notice Smart’s impact on punk, noise rock, indie rock, and grunge. In wake of the beloved studio’s death, The A.V. Club would like to acknowledge a handful of great Smart-associated records that may not have sold hundreds of thousands of copies, but are just as essential.

Killdozer, Intellectuals Are The Shoeshine Boys Of The Ruling Elite (1984)
Of all the dairy-punks of the early '80s, none were as noisy, vile, and bitterly sarcastic as Madison’s Killdozer. When listening to this drunken mess of rumbling bass, sloppy riffing, sledgehammer rhythms, and grumbled ranting, we can’t imagine how much time bassist-vocalist Michael Gerald spent rolling around on the floor in his own beer-vomit while Vig mixed down this piss-covered monument.

Crucifucks, Wisconsin (1987)
Lansing, Michigan’s Crucifucks’ recorded Wisconsin after original drummer Steve Shelley departed to join Sonic Youth in 1985. The snotty, politically charged vocals of Doc Corbin Dart crookedly soar over a series of refreshingly varied sonic backdrops. Whether the riffs sound strummed or beaten from the guitar, whether the rhythm section flies or crawls, Wisconsin never loses any of its dizzying punk energy.

Fire Town, In The Heart Of The Heart Country (1987)
Before Smart founders Butch Vig and Duke Erikson went on to achieve multi-platinum success in Garbage, they cut their teeth playing in a couple of bands around the Madison area. The second (and more refined) of the two was Fire Town. Its 1987 debut, In The Heart Of The Heart Country, is an infectious collection of pop-rock numbers that carefully straddle the line between new-wave and power-pop. No word on what year Erikson started rocking his signature soul patch.

Dwarves, Thank Heaven For Little Girls (1991)
“It seems like balling bitches / that’s all I ever do / Hey, you better watch your ass / I’ll fuck that too,” shouts vocalist Blag Dahlia of Chicago’s Dwarves, with startling conviction, on “Fuck 'Em All.” Even with barnburners like “Blag The Ripper,” “Who’s Fucking Who,” and “Lucky Tonight,” Thank Heaven For Little Girls may still linger in the shadow of the Chicagoans’ epic 1990 gross-out Blood, Guts, And Pussy. However, it’s still a classic in the realm of sweaty, degenerate hardcore.

Paw, Dragline (1993)
Paw rose to semi-stardom in the peak of the grunge movement’s commercial run in the early '90s. Sure, its grunge-by-numbers approach was hardly groundbreaking, and Mark Hennessy’s voice simply took David Yow’s drunken yelping to a slightly more melodic and digestible place, but 1993’s Dragline was a punchy, sincere, and often enjoyable take on the genre. It’s tough not to get sucked into the infectious progressions of “Couldn’t Know” and “Sleeping Bag,” or deny the sludgy impact of album-opener “Gasoline.”

Poster Children, Junior Citizen (1995)
Champaign, Illinois’ Poster Children were (and are) definitely one of the more underrated college-rock bands to emerge in the '90s, and the production of 1995’s Junior Citizen may have helped them provided the best-sounding translation of their quirky songwriting to date. From the slurred sonics of the pulsing “Wide Awake” to the punchy stomp of “King For A Day,” Poster Children blended sunny pop-rock with plenty of twitching electronics and self-awareness to keep this charming effort moving.

The Promise Ring, Very Emergency (1999)
Upon its 1999 release—before emo's descent into formulaic songwriting and arena-rock histrionics—Very Emergency was The Promise Ring’s most immediate and best-produced album to that point. Davey Von Bohlen and company crafted warm, sugary hooks, from the opening lines of “Happiness Is All The Rage” to the charming crawl of album-closer “All Of My Everythings.”

Sparklehorse, Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain (2006)
While Dreamt was tracked in a different studio by producer Dave Fridmann, it was later engineered and mixed at Smart by Mark Linkous, Al Weatherhead, and Beau Sorenson over a long December in 2005. “We mixed it from the beginning of December to Christmas day," Sorenson says. "It was pretty funny. Teresa [Linkous, Mark’s wife] actually ended up making Christmas dinner for everyone upstairs. It was cool. I actually got to spend Christmas with Mark Linkous. He’s such a sweet guy. And of all the guys I’ve gotten the chance to work with, he’s the closest to some kind of Brian Wilson-like genius.” [Editor's note: Linkous committed suicide on Saturday. News of his death arrived as we were editing this story.]

Pale Young Gentlemen, Black Forest (Tra La La) (2008)
Sorenson fondly refers to this Madison chamber-pop outfit’s excellent sophomore release as one of his favorites, but pulling together the album’s haunting orchestrations was no easy task: “I remember doing all the strings in the big room and not being sure if we’d be able to get the sound we wanted," he says. "We wanted a more hi-fi sound than a rock ‘n’ roll sound. I think we pulled it off, but it was really nerve-wracking and intense. I remember this girl bringing in a concert harp and it being too big to fit through the main door. So, we went through the trouble of opening the corner door to fit it through and wheel it in. It sounded amazing. We recorded lots of weird instruments, even a French horn. I think the album still really stands up strong. Michael [Reisenauer, guitarist-pianist-vocalist] is a great writer with an excellent sense of harmonic content."

Czarbles, S/T (2007)
Madison instrumental trio Czarbles riddle its ADD-math-rock with jagged guitar chops, scattershot drumming, fuzzy bass runs, and—most of all—head-spinning time changes. Somehow, Sorenson was able to make all these elements cohere into a warm-sounding debut. The dizzying interplay between guitarist Mark Sauer and bassist Matt Skemp collides into the frantic drum blasts of Jeff Sauer, throwing the listener into some kind of sonic gravitron and locking the door.