Inside The Credits 024: Rich Costey
Ranking My Favorite 7 Albums Fully Produced By Rich Costey
Rich Costey’s first official credits ever as a main producer came on two tracks, “Sunburn” and “Falling Down,” from Muse’s 1999 debut album Showbiz. Both are impeccably dynamic, emotionally gripping rock songs that left a lasting enough impression on the band that they tapped Costey to produce the entirety of their opus, 2003’s Absolution. That album is my favorite rock album of all time from my favorite band of all time. It’s also easily in my top five albums of any genre of all time.
Costey is equally as known for his engineering and co-production as he is for his main production. He has been involved in so many projects from 1999 till now that to even approach analyzing his catalog feels overwhelming. I had to start with where I already most revered him. I stuck to listening to full albums he’d been the main producer for and found a plethora of intriguing projects I hadn’t heard prior. Each project is, at minimum, rock adjacent, yet his catalog is all over the map in terms of subgenre and niche style. Costey’s ability to craft expertly woven rock albums over multiple decades feels pretty unparalleled. So to honor his album making process I put together a ranking of my favorite 7 full bodies of work he produced.
7. Kintsugi- Death Cab For Cutie
I’ve always gone back and forth with Death Cab For Cutie. Sometimes I find Ben Gibbard’s voice to be a little cloying and the lyrics to be a bit cheesy, but then other times there is something enticingly distinct about their style. Costey captures the best of them for about a third of an album here which to my ears is quite a feat. The band strikes gold when they lean into making music that feels like a deep fog rising from a lake at sunrise. When Gibbard’s lyricism leans into imagery led emotion with a bit of obscurity, rather than directness, their compositions come alive. “Black Sun” has become potentially my favorite song by Death Cab because of it’s capturing of this exact profundity at its most lasting level of committment. “The Ghosts of Beverly Drive” grabs at that feeling in its heavy mist-filled transitions, “Hold No Guns” is a soft ballad that feels like when that fog slowly melts away, and “El Dorado” moves from a lake to a dirt road replacing the condensation with dust.
6. Pour It Out Into The Night- The Revivalists
This is Costey’s only folk leaning album and his most recent that caught my ear. Just a little less than half the album really connected with me, but when it did it reminded me of some of the best folk/rock I’d heard prior. I’m talking The Avett Brothers and The Raconteurs in the late 2000s. The Revivalists lean a bit anthemic. This sometimes can result in something a bit too sacarine, but other times balances the perfect amount of singalong with guttural truth. Sometimes, however, they reach their most captivating potential when they peruse through introspective down-home storytelling, like on the album’s standout track “Down In The Dirt.” Rusty porch acoustic guitar accompanies a rumination on family values for those who have passed. When it hits the hook and the piano enters alongside thumping drums and church-riddled vocal layering, it really comes alive.
5. Beneath The Skin- Of Monsters and Men
I admittedly love a guy and girl duo lead vocalist situation. Of Monsters and Men remind me of others I’ve heard like The Civil Wars or The Decemberists, but they execute unison harmony with a much more gut centered drive. What’s most compelling about this album at its best is when the band leans more into a pop/rock space, but you can still hear the roots of their sound being in an indie place. It exemplifies the potential of a group when they want to expand their sound to a wider audience than local bars but don’t want to lose their core. It’s an ideal sounding second album which I thought before I realized it was actually their second album. Costey did produce a later album for them as well and by that point they leaned a bit too far away from where they started. This album for about half the time is them at their most deft and most pure.
4. Trust No One- Dave Navarro
While Costey did produce on a few later Jane’s Addiction albums, his work here with the band’s frontman for his lone solo project captured my attention most. It is in fact the first full album Costey was the main producer for in his career and in its raw verve is soul stirring. You can hear him here adding the rage filled underbelly to his early Muse work necessary to lift their opus. There’s still only about half the album that I really connected to, but that half an album is the most exciting bit of new music I heard in my search. It contains the songs I wanted to go back to most. The album sounds to me like if early 90s Beck had a baby with Pearl Jam. It’s a gritty west coast rock sound that covers all of its bases.
3. Our Love To Admire- Interpol
I had of course heard of Interpol but realized through this search I had never really listened to them. On this ranked list this is the first album that I was taken by the majority of. The really interesting thing about their sound is it feels like an exact fusion of The Strokes and The Killers. Sometimes that fusion didn’t quite connect when I listened, but when it did, it made me realize there is actually a symmetry to two band’s sounds I never recognized before. The crazy thing about this too is I saw The Strokes and The Killers headline the Governor’s Ball Festival in New York in 2016 on back to back nights. “Rest My Chemistry” is easily my favorite song on the project and is maybe the most The Strokes leaning. This makes sense given my preference.
2. Antenna- Cave In
Morning View by Incubus is my second favorite rock album of all time. This album, from a band I’d never heard of, reminded me of it for 9 out of 12 tracks. What Cave In and Rich Costey add to that sound however is a bit of a pop punk edge on certain tracks. If Incubus ever got really into Blink 182 I feel like an album that sounds like this one is what they would come up with. When they lean a little too Blink 182 is when they lose me, but that hard nosed open field euphoria they achieve in many of the bridges transports me to a festival ground. Costey is at his best when his projects hold an urgency at their core and this is the best example of that besides his actual best.
1. Absolution- Muse
This album made me realize something about myself: I like music that feels like it’s rooted in a gut feeling. The word absolution means to release oneself from guilt, obligation, or punishment. I didn’t even realize this when I first fell in love with this album, but that necessary refuge is something I think I and we are always searching for. It’s where solace and freedom lies. I am, and always will be enthralled with music that captures the exact specificity of a complex emotional state. Rich Costey and Muse do that in a kaleidoscopic way on Absolution, an album that still feels locked in the moment over 20 years after it was unleashed onto our ears.
Inside The Credits 024: Rich Costey- The Playlists