There was a conscious move away from, I don't think it's any less dancey, well I mean, it's less obvious than other stuff I think, but I was consciously avoiding certain specific drum beats that I think are super played-out in rock music right now. I was trying to keep it pretty simple. I wasn't trying to do anything too progressive either, but I was trying to avoid those cliché dance beats that people play all the time. In my band we call them "Boots and Pants." If you say "boots and pants" over and over again it sounds like a drum beat. I challenge you to try that.

Ok.

Boots-and-pants-and-boots-and-pants-and-boots-and-pants-and-boots-and-pants.

Boots-and-pants-and-boots-and-pants. Yeah, I can see that.

Yeah. It kind of sounds like a band from Oxford or something, you know?

I also read that on the new album, you performed nearly all the parts on the record, with the exception of a few songs that were played as a full band. Why did you choose to do it that way?

I feel like it wasn't so much a choice as it just ended up happening in the process of recording. When I started recording, the band was pretty young. The songs were pretty young as well and we did a few recordings that I decided I didn't think it was ready yet and I kept working on it. And then we had all the songs ready. They were all there being played. I had been working on them independently and I had a deadline for the record and we all got together in my studio and recorded them. And then when I was looking back the songs were missing some of the elements that I had intended to include that I didn't properly communicate with the guys in the band, so, I went back and sort of re-recorded a lot of the stuff that we had recorded together to honor what the intention of the songs was. I mean my bass player Nick [Sewell] plays on all but two songs, so he's on most of the record. The other guys play on about four songs and one of those songs is actually the very first thing we recorded together when we started making this record, well, when we first tried to make this record a year ago. It's pretty surprising, I went through three different versions of the song and then I was listening back to the drums sort of a week before I finished the record, to consider if I still wanted the song on the record, but I couldn't find the magic that I felt had been there in the past. So I listened to the very first take of the song from almost over a year ago and it had that magic so I just went back and used that. I don't know. It was just kind of a weird piecemeal process.

When I first started the record I wanted it to sound like celebration or something, real live sounding and not too much editing, but I'm kind of a compulsive guy and I was doing almost all the instruments myself and recording, so um I was left up to my own little methods.

I think it still has that live kind-of feel to it.

Yeah, Yeah, I think just in the performances that are given on the recording there is a certain stable structure to the recording, but then I did try to add sort of lively and imperfect takes. You know? I was sort of in a crunch at the end where I had to finish the record and it was actually really liberating because I was able to do a take, like a vocal take and had I no deadline I would've kept doing that vocal take over and over again, you know? But because I had a deadline, I was like you know what, I'm going to keep that. That sounds real. It sounds good, so I'm going to keep it. So having those deadlines was really sort of a blessing in the end.

I read that you're also part owner of Giant Studios -there in Toronto with Jimmy Shaw of Metric. Could you tell me a little bit about the studio and why you wanted to be part owner of it?

Well, the studio, we sort of built it with the idea of making a real studio with real equipment and something that would be desirable for a lot of people to work in. and we do intend on hiring and we do hire it out, but we wanted to ensure that while we're in control of it that only records that we want to be made are being made in there. And we built it specifically for our own purposes, for my record and the Metric record that they're making now. But after those records are done we wanted to ensure that at least people, maybe not that we knew but that we respected were working there and so far that's how it's worked out. It's been sort of friends, and friends of friends have been working there and I can't say that anything bad has come out of it yet. We kind of want to keep that. A lot of studios can slip into that, where they need to pay the bills that month so they record a diaper commercial or something in there. We're trying to avoid that.

The way the studio came about was a couple years ago I was looking to buy a small little house because I was tired of paying rent and I had a made a little bit of money and all the places I was looking at was sort of in an area that I didn't really want to live in but was the only place that I could really afford. So I was hanging around the neighborhood where I was renting one night and drinking with Jimmy and started talking about my record, how I was going to make it and he basically said, "Listen. I want to make your record. And I want to buy a house with you and build a studio." Within five weeks of that conversation we closed a deal on a house right up the street from where we were drinking. It was a house that could accommodate a couple of apartments, where we live, and attached to the house was a warehouse on the same property that we converted to a studio. It all lined up so perfectly that it's hard to believe that it happened that way.

Now you also have your alias as The Rhythm Method. On the record, the last track is you featuring The Rhythm Method. I was wondering is there a split personality thing going on? Why did you decide to title it that way?

Um, basically I titled it that way because the track wasn't originally intended to be on the record and I do intend to keep those two, I guess, personalities separate. One of them is the songwriter and the other is sort of a computer-producer I guess. The songs that I have been recording for Rhythm Method are basically just me playing instruments but there's a lot of looping involved and it's more dance oriented I guess. And I intend to keep those two separate because my principle method of writing doesn't sound like that so I created the other project to sort of umbrella all those things that I do when I'm not writing rock songs or whatever. And I really liked that song and I recorded it a while ago for a 7" in the UK and the 7" just never came out. They kept pushing the release date further and further and my band and I started playing it live and it gets a really good reception when we play it and we enjoy playing it and my bass player just said "You have to put this song on the record. It's ridiculous not to." So considering the song wasn't coming out on the 7", I was just like, fuck it, I'll put it on the record featuring The Rhythm Method as a sort of cross-promotional tactic and as I decided to do that, the record came out in the UK. So now it's out as The Rhythm Method in the UK and a slightly different mix of it will be available on the record in North America.

You're signed to Saddle Creek, which is funny because all the publicists are like "don't call him a singer songwriter!" -what Saddle Creek is known for. Why did you decide to go with Saddle Creek?

I did it because it happened in a really easy way. I'm sort of a believer in the path of least resistance. In music, if it feels right, do it. And it really felt right, they were really positive and collective and they were there, they were present and communicated with me. While other labels showed interest, you have to take action to get results and they were taking action so I respected that and it was easy. So that was why I did that.

Makes sense to me. I also read, I can't remember where now, that you had been trying to get some government funding to make a video from the new record. I was wondering if that worked out and if you could tell me about that.

It didn't work out initially but, actually, as we're speaking my friend Jeff just pulled up on his bike and we just had a meeting yesterday about making a video together for the LP. There's a grant system in Canada that supports the arts and there's a big one that is intended for people to make music videos and I think the original intention is to give 20 grand to someone who otherwise wouldn't have that money to make that video and promote Canadian music on television.

Unfortunately, and I don't want to shoot myself in the foot by criticizing people who might give me money, but they tend to give money to people who don't really need it a lot of the time, like, big huge Canadian bands who I know personally are making money. So it wasn't surprising that we didn't get it the first time around. Death From Above didn't get the money the first time around either. And we ended up getting it for our weirdest song as opposed to our poppiest song. So hopefully we'll get it this time because we have a pretty awesome idea for a video. Even though sometimes it seems like videos, where do they go? I don't even know where they go. I don't even watch music television.

Also, just sort of a last kind of question, I saw that you have your cooking and food blog. If you for some reason weren't making music do you think you would be a chef or anything like that?

Uhh, I would like to think so. But I would probably just end up being some jerkoff schmo working in an office or something else. I have no idea. I've never tried to project really what I would be. I used to say, "Oh, I'd be a carpenter," but I think that's kind of a pretentious thing to say. [laughs] Even though I like making things. But I just like the way that it sounds because Jesus was a carpenter and that guy is OK by me. At least the Andrew Lloyd Webber version.