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December 2008. ENTERTAINMENT

PANTHER POST

From ‘Roberts’... page 2 _—

You’ve placed an empha- sis on the significance of history in this album and some of the songs suggest there has been a severance with music’s past. Do you really think modern rock music has abandoned its roots?

I don’t think modern

‘music has struck out in an

entirely new direction with completely a new palette of sounds and rhythms. I mean we will always be indebted to the traditions of the past. Nobody’s inventing any- thing new its kind of ar- ranging the same old com- ponents in your own way I guess. So I don’t think I can say with any accuracy that we have completely lost our way but I’m not inspired by what I hear on the radio a lot of the time, you know, and it comes down, as it

so often does, to your own personal taste and the things that inspire me about rock and roll music is it being a real reflection of the world we are living in. A sort of ear to the ground, finger on the pulse of society phe- nomenon and I think that

it has strayed from that absolutely, in my own mind anyway. It’s weird because

~ as the world gets more

troubled or less troubled the importance of rock and roll music specifically place tends to shift, you know. When the world is good people listen to disco and when it gets bad again all of sudden you people need it to reflect something real. “Can’t sell my songs so I’m gonna have to give

‘em away”’’- that statement carries a lot of weight with it, yet Love at the End of

the World hit No.1 on

its first week of release

’ in Canada. Do you think

downloading has had a negative impact on the — industry?

I think it’s hard to say right now. We’re still in transi- tion and we’re in that shift between the old order where

_ selling records was the

norm and where you could rely on making a living as an artist if you were doing well, whatever that is, top of the charts. As a band you could rely on deriving some sort of income on that where as now that is no longer re- ally the case. Because even if you debut at No.1 and I mean we sold 9,000 cop- ies across the country and that was enough to put us to No.1. That is about a tenth of what it used to be to have a No.1 debut. So clearly there’s a major shift hap- pening and it just forces us as a band to be adaptable to finding new ways of mak- ing this our livelihood, not just a hobby. But you know it’s definitely shaking up the industry. Unfortunately right now one of the results of that is that from a record

company’s standpoint is that

people are a lot less will- ing to take risks to sign new bands who may sort of have a few more question marks attached to them and in- stead always go for the safe bet which kind of brings. us back to your first ques- tion which is why is it that I don’t find music inspiring

Canadian photo

today. Well, the music out there is inspiring, it’s just that you have to look a lot harder for it. And you can’t just turn on the radio to find something that’s new and exciting anymore because that stuff is by its very defi- nition and nature these days always a safe bet. Always

the thing that has worked in

the past and they just sort . of try to reconfigure it you know or give it anew name

but it’s essentially the same -

thing and that’s very much a result of people not selling records anymore and people being unwilling to take risks in positions of power where they are actually footing

the bills for the records are scared of losing their jobs. Although you present a critical standpoint on soci- ety in songs like Stripmall Religion and Them Kids,

j

rock superstar Sam Roberts plays to the Wave November 27 Bysterveldt

the album still maintains an overall sentiment of hope and gratitude. What is your main source of optimism in life?

I don’t really know and I don’t think watching the news has helped me out

_either. I think I'll have to

stop watching the news essentially, I’d probably be a far more optimistic per- son. I think I’ve just been

a very forward-looking person from the beginning and despite the setbacks

we face on a collective level almost everyday. Like yesterday, we watch more news and that’s ten steps back for humanity and you know there just seems to be some sort of light out there that shines brighter than darkness. For me that’s just kind of always been there in my life just being alive in

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general makes me feel good. It’s a hard thing to describe. I’ve always been happy

to be alive and I'll always appreciate the fact that I’m alive and that sounds pretty fundamental but I think the fact that I get to play music all the time.

I’m connected to one of the things that I think again kind of pulls you out of the muck and I get to do it everyday and that’s why I want to do it everyday because every time you turn on the news and you see something evil you know, you get to experience this thing that is so far on the opposite end of the spec- trum. And to see the best in people and to bring out the best in people and have them bring it out in you it’s a reaffirmation of the things that are good in life .