“The studio was a small set up inside a giant barn. In the summer, it was very nice; you can hang out in the barn part and not necessarily be in the studio,” Bleeker told The Jakarta Post over a telephone interview on Sept. 22, recalling the recording session that took place for Days. The record, released on Oct. 18, 2011, remains a fan favorite and is generally considered the band’s best.

“I remember this one summer day, I was just lying on the couch and hearing the song that I think Martin [Courtney, singer and guitarist] was working on the guitar part and it was going over and over and over again […] I feel like I was living inside of this record.”

According to Bleeker, the sophomore album was recorded in a span of a year between 2010 and 2011. The band members, who were then in their early 20s, divided their time between their day jobs and touring to promote their first album. They would go back and forth when they could to a barn in the remote New Paltz, New York, in the United States, to work with producer and childhood friend Kevin McMahon.

Bleeker remembered that the recording process had been a coming-of-age moment for the band, allowing them to learn about recording in a professional studio. Bleeker said the band had only learned the necessity of tuning their guitars prior to recording and avoiding friends who just wanted to “party and hang out” when it was time to concentrate on making songs.

“We were really young and it was the first time that we were recording in a more proper studio that was not like a friend’s attic. And I think that we were really naive and we didn’t really know what we were doing in a lot of ways,” Bleeker said.

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