Interview: Les Savy Fav

Syd Butler: When Minor Threat was around I don’t think they ever thought, "This is gonna be my career". They just thought, "This us expressing ourselves musically." For us it's been... well, when we moved from Providence to New York we all had a jobs and kept being a band because it was a great way to socialise and be together and be friends.

NN: So is that what the album title refers to, the band staying friends?
TH: In the most simple way, yes. If your goal isn’t to expand the band, or that you need to pay your bills, why else keep doing this?

NN: It’s strange, that that should seem like a unique way of looking at it. Really, shouldn’t that be how all bands work?
TH: There’s some people that are just kind of dumb except when they pick up their guitar and start singing like complete geniuses. For them it’s pretty much like, "Well good on you, you oughta do it". But I feel like, if you can do other things, there are a lot of interesting things in the world!

NN: I love that on your website it reads "Missing out on cashing in for over a decade". Is there any real bitterness beneath that?
TH: I think this album is an expression of defeating that bitterness. For me as a lyricist, some days there is a semblance of some kind of bitternesss. You make decisions on purpose to not be like that, but then you’re also nagged by self doubt and second guessing. That’s where the bitterness comes from.

The most important thing is to defy that, and the last song ‘The Highest Bitter’ specifically talks about defying bitterness and refusing to be made bitter. The end of the song ‘The Year Before the Year 2000’ is a response to the Prince song ‘1999’ - you know where he is talking about how it’s easy to party with abandon if you think there’s no consequences. [Our song is talking about having] gleeful abandon but trying to lay claim to that same energy when there’s no definite end in site; looking at the world and seeing with a really clear eye, but demanding optimism, enthusiasm and joy and NOT getting jaded, not getting bitter. I think this record isn’t a bitter, jaded record and that’s the catharsis of it.

NN: Besides, even if you’re not rich and famous you definitely have an adoring fanbase.
TH: We love that, it’s exciting. We never as a band chased down fans in a way where you have people that maybe don’t like you but your record is played so many times that even I'll be like, "You know, I think I might be kind of into this Nickelback song, I’ve heard it so many times." (laughs) Those fans, they come and they go. So I think there’s a connection to so many of our fans because so many of them sought us out.

NN: And your fans are loyal.
TH: What’s nice about that is that we can operate the way we want to operate, taking six years in between full lengths. It was really gratifying with this record that people were still there and were still interested. They know that we waited that long because we didn’t want to put anything crappy out. We waited until we were good and ready to put out the record we really wanted to put out. If we had continued to put records out in the standard 18 months, we would have had 10 records by now and not all of them would have been good. We don’t want to put out a record unless it’s good.

SB: There’s something else about our fans that I appreciate. I feel very comfortable with our fans. I think there’s a real kinship we have when we’re on stage, that we’re one with the room. There’s no separation between band and audience. I feel like I could walk up to any of them and invite them back to my house for dinner. It means a lot to me and I think it means a lot to the band.

NN: Your live shows are infamous but does that put pressure on you? What if you’re having a bad night?
TH: I think the live shows got the way they did from playing sucky shows - the kind of shows where no one is there or no one is interested. My live performance comes really directly from playing for literally no one except the bar staff, and entertaining these guys. Like entertaining (band members) Seth and Syd and Harrison. I feel like the more friction there is for the show - whether you’re tired, or the show seems bad - the more I refuse to accept that. It sounds like a self-help book, but you can alter whatever situation by changing your perception and changing your actions.

NN: Do you guys have a favourite song?
SB: That is something that I find unique to this record. Everyone has a favourite song. On the label side of things, I’ll try to go for singles that I think people will like as opposed to ones I personally like, but on this one everyone has their favourite. With 'Rome' it was like"[release] these songs", with ‘Go Forth’ - "these songs" - but for this one I have no idea. Not unless anyone can tell me.

TH: To play live though? ‘The Equestrian’ is fun as hell to play live.

SB: See for me I prefer ‘Patty Lee’ because it’s a quintessential pop song with all the elements that define Les Savy Fav. ‘The Equestrian’ is a great song, it’s a rocker, it’s fun to play, but I don’t think it has the dynamics. I think the press over here is responding to ‘What Would Wolves Do’ which isn’t something we would have thought at all.

TH: [That's] one of the things about this record in general. Even though it’s got more polish than a lot of our other records, in general it’s less laboured. People had said to us, "It kind of sounds live," and I’m like, "What do you mean, live?" I think they’re talking about the fact that it’s alive. Each time we go into the studio it’s about learning how to dance with less control.

NN: It also seems like a good record for people who haven’t heard you yet, to introduce them to the band.
TH: I think the other record that had that was the last ‘Inches’ project, but that was literal. You know, it had a lot going on and showed all the different facets of what we know how to do. Literally, the last song on the album is the first song we ever recorded and the first song was the most recent one we recorded.

NN: For you, is there a particular theme between the songs on this album?
TH: No... I tend to hover around certain themes and one of the things this time was I had a hard time writing lyrics. We did the first tracking last November and in December we were supposed to do the lyrics for four days just before New Years and I didn’t have anything ready... I was a wreck. On Christmas Eve I was in my mother and father in-laws' guest bedroom in their house and had 300 notecards where I had written little bits of lyrics and ideas and I’d gone through like every sketchbook I’d ever sketched in and everything…I was at a complete loss and completely confused.

NN: So you didn’t have any completed songs?
TH: The way I’d written in the past is the way we’ve written our music, which is to just write tons and whittle it down into songs. This [time] was much more like, find a thread and pull it. To tease the song out of a small amount rather than make this huge pile and carve it.

NN: Do you think that has to do with having confidence as a lyric writer?
TH: Yeah, but also finally understanding some of the themes I like to write about that in past albums came from the hip instinctively. For me lyrically, one of the things I’ve always sung about is embracing chaos, embracing misunderstanding. The goal of life isn’t to learn, the goal is to learn how much you don’t know. That was fine and easy to say when I was cocky, a kid, writing our first records. But with this record, just before we started recording, I had a baby. You challenge the world to slap you in the face over and over again and then all of a sudden the world actually slaps you in the face - and the question is, are you gonna go down, are you gonna punch back, are you going to turn the other cheek? To turn your other cheek is the best thing to do because the world is always going to slap you in the face and the only way to be a part of it all is to be like, "Slap it again!"

The triumphant feel of ‘The Lowest Bitter’ is really like the end of a journey. The song before it, ‘Scotchguard the Credit Card’, about resenting the rent, or ‘Comes and Goes’ about a really dark, ice-cold relationship – those are like the realities of the world. ‘The Lowest Bitter’ is like, "Yes, I accept all those things, but I demand not to be beaten and to be a really optimistic band. To live up to what people say. Like, 'These guys do whatever they want however they want it.' The energy of our live show... to prove it's real, not an act."