Recently I had the opportunity to sit down with Los Angeles-based psych pop trio Mini Mansions on the Columbus stop of their tour while serving as the direct support for Tame Impala. We chatted about recording their latest full-length, which I reviewed not too long ago, collaborating with other artists, and how “L.A. is like the DMV” for music.

TUNED UP: The Great Pretenders released back in March. How has the album been received thus far?

Mini Mansions: The general perception has been very good. Our fans like it. In the UK, Europe, and other places, it’s been reviewed with high praise. There, it’s gone really well. In the U.S. however, we’ve gotten virtually zero reviews. Since no one wants to review our record, we don’t really understand what people think of it here. But our fans like it, and that’s what matters. After all, we made it for ourselves and the people [who are fans of our music].

The Great Pretenders is your second album. Tell me a little bit about that recording process. How did it differ from recording your full-length debut, 2010’s self-titled?

We were touring a ton when we made the first record, so the scheduling was much spottier. We didn’t just get a month to go into the studio, have at it, and get into that groove. We would record for 3, even 2, to 5 days at a time over a span of six months. For this record though we were able to block out 18 days or so when we really went at it. There were patches before that but that’s just because we weren’t sure if we were going to make a record or not. This made things really comfortable. There was more room and time to experiment, and really no sense of urgency, [which allowed us to] get into the groove, and find our place with what we really wanted to do. We’ve known the engineer we worked with for ten years, so that’s always helpful. It was also our second time around, so this time we were more familiar with how the process was going to go as a band. Even with mixing, on the first record, 3 or 4 different people mixed it over the course of four or five months. With the new record, we went to Dallas for two and a half weeks to mix it with our friend John Congleton. We’d go in every day.

So you got to be a part of the mixing process as well then?

Kind of. He’d kick us out from time to time, but overall it was much more focused.

Cool. Speaking on the new album as a whole, Alex Turner and Brian Wilson are both guest vocalists. That covers quite a bit of ground. Are there any other musicians you’d like to collaborate with further down the road?

We don’t really think too much about collaborating, and we didn’t really think about it going into this record either. It’s just something that happened, and it was at the end of the session, so it came 2 to 3 years after lengthy talks about writing, recording, and mixing a record. By no means am I trying to downplay it at all, but at the very end, we got this “icing on the cake,” so to speak, as it was pretty much already made and “ready to be served.”

On “Any Emotions,” Brian Wilson essentially sings backing vocals. It gave the song such a great effect, but someone else could have done that. It wouldn’t have been nearly as good, but it still would’ve been there.

It’s possible, and it certainly wouldn’t have been the same, but at the same time, we’re a very private band. I mean, we haven’t even added a fourth member, but that’s just because we like keeping it between the three of us.

And that makes sense because when it’s more private, it can be more dialed in, more focused, and it’s really just the three of you guys, even in the studio with a producer. You don’t have someone else trying to hop in and help give their input. With the Brian Wilson guest spot, Zach had already collaborated with Brian on his new album, so it was like the whole “favor for a favor” thing. No one at all comes to mind though as someone you’d love to collaborate with?

I’d like to work with Prince. It’d also be fun to do something with St. Vincent. We could just have them both do cool guitar solos, and maybe even backup vocals. Or that chick from The Fugees, Lauryn Hill. You like The Fugees, right? *laughs.*

Admittedly, The Fugees were before my time. *laughs.* Anyway, you guys recorded quite a few songs that didn’t make it onto the album. You’ve put out five 7” singles already, and every single has a b-side which was not on the record. A lot of those were really good, like “Ordinary Man” for instance. How does a song like that not make the album?

The majority of the b-sides were actually going to be the record two or three years ago. We had about 8 songs that were finished and ready to be mastered, and that was going to be it. We were [planning on] calling it a mini-album, because it wasn’t quite an EP or a full-length; it was just in between. As that time went by though, we wrote ten to fifteen more songs. We wanted to stay relevant to ourselves, and in general we thought those songs were a lot stronger than what we had been sitting on, so those eleven songs ended up being the ones we chose for the record. All those b-sides you hear are like listening to a record we were going to put out a few years ago, if you listen to all of them in sequence.

So there’s no plan to release those b-sides together then?

No, not now. In hindsight, the way those were released was a result of infrastructure that we had. The beginning of the band was just us writing and recording music without a proper label or anything behind us. We didn’t have anyone to cut out those b-sides when we had finished them, so we just sat on them for a bit while Mike was doing stuff with Queens [of the Stone Age]. We didn’t have to do it soon though; no one was really overseeing that. We were just focused on writing and recording more, and going through managers like Tinder. *laughs.*

Last question for you: TUNED UP is based right here in Columbus and we’re all about the music scene, particularly building our local scene. Mini Mansions officially hails from Los Angeles. That being said, what is your favorite part about the L.A. music scene?

I think I’ve said this before, but [for music] L.A. is like the DMV. I guess my favorite part about it is that anyone can come to L.A. to start a band. Anyone can very easily meet other people who will want to play with them. In L.A., everyone in some way, shape, or form, either is or was a musician. It’s like the Wild West, and there are so many venues. That’s why I think it’s magical, but also daunting.

There are so many bands out there that you can get lost in the shuffle if you’re not careful.

Like us. But we’re not lost in the shuffle; we ARE the shuffle. In some ways, we’re just a little band in Los Angeles in this great big scene, with a million bands trying to prove themselves.

Mini Mansions is Tyler Parkford, Michael Shuman, and Zach Dawes. The trio is currently signed to Electromagnetic Recordings, T Bone Burnett’s sublabel of Capitol Records. The Great Pretenders is available for purchase on iTunes and the band’s website, among other outlets.