Courtesy of Aleesha HarrisThe Daily Aztec: So, your new album, “Old Crows/Young Cardinals” deputed on the Canadian charts at No.1.
Alexisonfire drummer Jordon Hastings and vocalist George Pettit: Well, No. 2 I think. Black Eyed Peas snuck in there. Also, actually Michael Jackson, he screwed us on the iTunes charts. He had eight spots, then it was us and the Black Eyed Peas.
DA: Well, I guess that’s not a bad person to lose the top spot to.
AOF: Ya, it is Michael Jackson. But, he couldn’t have waited a week? Come on.
DA: So, I have a few more statistics for that album. It went No. 81 on the Billboard Top 200, is at No. 31 on the rock albums chart, No. 9 independent album, No. 23 alternative album and No. 12 hard rock album.
AOF: Wow, that’s pretty neat! We’re making some headway in America, I think. It’s weird. I don’t see us ever becoming a big band in America. Which is fine, we actually do quite well in Canada, Europe and Australia. Once in a while we put out a record and it gets a little bit bigger every time, so yeah, it’s nice.
DA: After the recent release of your fourth full-length album, rumors began to circulate that this would be your last? Is that true?
AOF: No, we perpetuated that rumor. We were taking a pretty long hiatus, we took about a year off. We toured on “Crisis” for 15 months, just non-stop. Everybody just wanted to get away from the road and go home for a while. And in doing that, there was a lot of dead time and people were starting to talk about “maybe this is it for Alexisonfire.’ Also, Dallas (Green’s) solo project was getting really big in Canada. So when it came time to do press again, we kind of perpetuated the rumors, just because it was funny. Because we were, at the same time those rumors were starting, we were in the jam space writing our fourth record. We were like practicing and learning new songs and we said “Oh ya, we’ll let them keep thinking we’re going to break up and three months from now we were like here’s the new record, f**kers!” So we’re still here.
DA: The last two albums became significantly more serious as far as lyrical tone. Why did that change?
AOF: Probably touring the world has a lot to do with it. That kind of opens your eyes a little bit. I think that, and maybe our influences at the time. Not coming from a fun or a funny place. I think on the first two records, lyric writing was a very satirical thing for me and, especially on the first record, I was listening to a lot of jazz and I really love the Dead Kennedys and just having a really sarcastic tone in the way that you write lyrics. So that comes through on the first two albums, like on “Watch Out” you write a song about Linda Blaire and then you write a song about a particular brand of go-carting that I used to do. For “Crisis” we were in the thick of the Bush Administration and I just didn’t feel like it was right to tell kids that everything was just fine. And at the time there was a lot of pop music too, a lot of pop music was coming up. A lot of the bands that you would recognize as punk bands were doing pop stuff. Bands like Blink-182 got really popular and were just telling kids “Oh, we’re all in love, we’re having a great time,’ and we were just like, that’s not it. The music I was listening to when I was young was angry music that made you want to blow up the government. So that’s it, I felt like that was more important for kids to hear.
DA: As a band, your biggest goal is …
AOF: I’d like to go play in South Africa. We’ve done pretty well in South Africa. We are No. 1 on one of the really big radio stations there. But then I saw the movie “District 9” and now I don’t want to go because there are aliens there. There is a serious alien issue there, but we can go there and bring light to the plight of the aliens. Release the prawns.
DA: Put together an ideal tour lineup for me.
AOF: Well, you’ve got the Beatles, the Stones, us. (laughs) Queen, ZZ Top, Hot Water Music, Vortex Moneymaker, Elton John, Dead Kennedys … this is like the best tour ever.
