On the band’s breakthrough self-titled LP, Long Island’s As Tall As Lions built itself a tower of lush sounds, adding minute details, perfectly placed instrumentation and just the right amount of reverb. Piece by piece, the band ended up creating one of the most meticulously crafted albums of 2006. With huge choruses and enormous, space-filling bridges, the album was like a Gilded Age mansion of indie rock. Two years later, the band has one overriding thought for the next album: tear the mansion down. Screw the tiny details and screw the unending overdubs; Dan Nigro and crew want to do it live.

“Every time we’ve ever recorded our records before, we kinda felt like we were leaving some stuff out of them by recording them piece by piece,” Nigro says as he’s on his way to begin pre-production for the new album, tentatively titled “You Can’t Take it With You.” “It was drums first, then bass, then guitar, then keyboard, then vocals, then taking all these vocal takes, then making sure the vocals were perfect. And that kinda stuff just sucked the soul out, but we never worked with anyone who knew how to do anything else but that.”

So the band set off to find someone that could cater to their new ambitions, and after rejecting a number of producers that were “scared” of the band’s new, live-tracking approach, eventually settled on Clap Your Hands Say Yeah/Yo La Tengo producer Adam Lasset as the man to lead them to the promise land. The band’s production will be the most obvious change from album to album—the more subtle change may be thematically.

“We actually pondered [the themes] with the last record when we finished writing it, we felt like there were a lot of songs about relationships, and we felt like there was—unknowingly—a lot of that teenage angst coming out of our music. We were like, ‘Uh, we’re not really teenagers, why are we writing about this subject matter?’ … [This new album] represents not living in the past, trying to live in the now. “

More than likely, a listener’s enjoyment to As Tall As Lions’ sound, both past and future, will be based significantly on Nigro’s vocal work (which has oft been compared to the late Jeff Buckley). Nigro boasts one of the more flexible voices in indie rock, able to belt out even the highest notes, the ones that usually demand a kick in the crotch for most of us to sing. With a voice as pleasant as this, there’s no doubt he could compete with top-40′s best talents. And considering the fact that he’s a fairly good-looking guy, I’ll say what everyone is afraid to admit: this guy could win “American Idol.” And yet, even with the lead singer/lead songwriter vibe, he’s not exactly running the show.

“Sean, our guitarist, writes most of the lyrics. I definitely write some lyrics and come up with subject matter,” he says. “Everybody writes everything, but there are guitar parts that I don’t play that I’ve written. We try to stay as much of a democracy as possible, sometimes it doesn’t work, like someone will come with an idea that three people will like, and one person really doesn’t like it…ninety-eight percent of the time, though, we’re a democracy, and the majority rules.” (Andy Seifert)

As Tall As Lions plays December 19 at Reggie’s Rock Club, 2105 South State, ((312)949-0120, at 7pm.