Toronto's Einstein Brothers built a wall of sound out of a combination of Phil Spector overdubs, dusty Tom Waits guitar and musical sound effects for Chevrolet's "Outta Gas" Impala spot for MacLaren McCann in Toronto.

The commercial features a trio of vampish singers, all sporting large hairdos reminiscent of the Ronnettes or the Supremes. Stranded in the desert while their manager goes for gas, the ladies turn down a number of possible rides until a Chevrolet Impala arrives -- the gist being the Impala is the only car with enough headroom to accommodate their monumental hairstyles. Due to the obvious association between this imagery and the music orchestrated by "wall of sound" musical innovator Phil Spector, the creative team was drawn to using a style reminiscent of this brand of early '60s soul music.

"Director Jim Sonzero [repped by Radke Films in Canada and Venus in the US] wanted to have those girls singing, so we originally wrote a piece of music so the talent, who were models and not singers, could sing to it," says Jody Colero, composer, owner and creative director at Einstein Brothers. "When we got to the cut, they realized it wasn't effective and tossed it, but they were still interested in the Phil Spector world."

Colero and another composer, Steve D'Angelo, struggled with creating a piece that captured the arid look of the film but, at the same time, provided a contemporary take on the Spector sound. After a grueling 18-hour studio session, the pair came up with a musical concept that Colero says satisfied the agency's creative team.

"We couldn't go and rip off Phil Spector and put a drum loop under it," explains Colero. "The thing the agency liked about [the final track] is that it took two directions -- it has kind of a dirty Tom Waits feel off the top and then moves into a Phil Spector thing, then fades off into the back end combining those two different elements."

True to the overdubbing legacy of Spector, Colero and D'Angelo wrote a track combining layer over layer of instrumentation, including multiple percussion lines, to create a large dynamic sound. Unlike Spector, who worked with a four track, the Einstein Brothers stacked approximately 70 layers onto their track.

"When it hits TV, the stations set their volumes to the loudest thing they hear in a spot, and the loudest thing that jumps out is the voice-over," says Colero. "We didn't build it as big as we could have simply because it would be too loud for TV. On radio, we could do it, but it is still too large. There are strings, horns, eight tracks of groups singing, drums and rhythm sections -- it's huge!"

The composers wrote their music to the film, and Colero notes that keeping the music sincere and adherent to one musical idea presented a challenge.

"There is nothing desert or dirty about Phil Spector at all, which is why we brought the Tom Waits feel into it," explains Colero. "Also, the sound effects are oddball musical sounds rather than straight sound design. There is one record scratch when the girls turn down a ride, the slap on her hip is really loud, but you don't hear the sound effects -- they are part of the story rather than some kind of fake reality."

Einstein Brothers has done spot music for clients such as Cadbury, Nike, Chrysler, Listerine and Motorola.

WEB.FILES:
MacLaren McCann: http://www.maclaren.com
Chevrolet: http://www.chevrolet.com