MVRemix: Was it a good night last night?

James Shaw: It was a good night. I got to see my friends in The Dears. I always love watching those guys. It was a great show.

MVRemix: Have you played the Commodore before?

James Shaw: We’ve played here five times, but we’ve never headlined it, though.

MVRemix: And the show is sold out.

James Shaw: I guess so.

MVRemix: Well, you did.

James Shaw: Awesome, I didn’t know that. That’s a good thing to know.

MVRemix: And you have Arts County Fair at UBC tomorrow. Have you played their before?

James Shaw: We did that two years ago. But we had a show in Calgary the next night, so the only way we could do it was to put us first or second. We played at like noon, and there were literally three people there.

MVRemix: It’ll be a lot of drunk kids, and probably wet.

James Shaw: Awesome.

MVRemix: You’ve got a lot of festivals coming up, but the one I want to ask you about is Canada Wet. Are you excited about that?

James Shaw: I’m thrilled. I can’t even… I’ll believe it when I see it. That many people I know in a place that foreign is wild.

MVRemix: The album is being released in France and throughout Europe…

James Shaw: Yeah. France, England, Spain, Belgium, somewhere else...

MVRemix: You’ll end up there. I want to ask you about your record label, which was started by your lawyer. Why did you go with him, and not with Relentless Records in Europe?

James Shaw: He had been our lawyer since we started, and he had been trying to find us a good home to be in, in terms of a record label, and just never really found it. And we were all really frustrated, it seemed like there wasn’t going to be anybody that would understand what we were trying to do, and give it the support that it needed. It’s not immediately understandable music. It’s not like it’s going to get sent to the radio and it gets huge over night. You have to be patient with it. And I think with us, we’re sort of the same way, I think our music is going to get really good, but it takes it’s time. We’re developing, and he wanted to find a label that was going to understand that for a long time, and it never really came to be. Basically, he just came to us one time and said I’m just going to start this label because we can’t find the right home for you guys. So we just made it ourselves.

MVRemix: Has it been working well?

James Shaw: It’s been fantastic. On Old World Underground, they had the record for Canada, but for the next record they have for the whole world. We’re just buying licensing partners in different territories.

MVRemix: How is the new album coming?

James Shaw: It’s going great so far. We’re about halfway done making the next record. I built a recording studio in my house, and I’ve been producing it on my own. It’s been an amazing process.

MVRemix: Are you guys trying to go the independent route?

James Shaw: I think so, yeah. I always figured that unless you’ve sold 50,000-100,000 records there is no point in even entertaining the idea of being on a major label because you’ll just get crushed. Look at what’s happening to Fiona Apple right now, she’s sold millions of records and her company doesn’t like her record so they’re not going to release it. I just don’t ever want to be in that position. I’ll forgo the opportunity to make millions, so I am never in that position.

MVRemix: Whenever I see the major music press try to sum up the bands sound in a couple of sentences, the word “pop” always seems to come up, but listening to the record there seems to some contempt for modern pop culture.

James Shaw: I’ve always understood why they used it. I’ve always thought that I have a really solid pop sensibility. Things have to make sense in my ear, in a certain way that is very poppy. We can try and subvert it with different tone, or productions sounds or whatever, but the fact is a lot of the times my ear is just drawn to the really blatant pop changes and hooks. I don’t like it when people use the word, because it has the connotations to a bunch of really crappy music, but the word itself is not a dirty word to me.

MVRemix: It works both ways.

James Shaw: It does. It’s a weird one that’s so vast. It’s kind of lost any real meaning.

MVRemix: I’ve heard that you have more than enough material for the next album, and may be cutting a couple of tracks that you’ve been performing for the past year.

James Shaw: One of them were are almost definitely gonna cut. The other one we need to try and record again because it didn’t fly the first time around. It’s interesting because we’ve been playing those songs live for a year, and it’s very different how it happens on stage. There’s a huge sound system behind you, you got a bunch of people in front of you, and you can pull of very different things than you can on a record. With a record, you have to be prepared for someone to be listening to it while they’re lying in a bath, or on headphone, or while you’re driving your car, or in their living room eating dinner to it. People listen to records all over the place, and you lose the entire visual element. One of the tunes I feel may not be on the album, we realized is more of a performance piece. When you see it, you know it makes sense, but when you hear it and you don’t get a visual behind it, you can feel the lack of the song itself. If a songs not great, you can throw a lot of bells and whistles behind a perforce, in a recording there’s not that much you can do. The songs got to stand on its own.

MVRemix: Do you have an onstage philosophy?

James Shaw: If there is a philosophy, it’s to try and be the most ridiculous guitar player I can possibly push myself to be. I’ve played shows where I’ve written it off for whatever reason, and been like this is a waste of time, whatever. I’d try and make the biggest ass of myself onstage as I possibly can, and it would be at those shows when people come up to me afterwards, especially the band, and say ‘that was the best show I’ve seen you play on guitar.’ I’ve come to this conclusion that I have the ability that I can do no wrong except to not take it far enough out. So I always try and take it as far out as I possibly can.

MVRemix: Tell me how the FACTOR program has helped you.

James Shaw: It’s truly incredible. I mean we got two Americans in the band, and when we first started calling them and saying that we had gotten so much money to make a video, they’d be like, “what are you talking about?” The grant system in Canada has got to have something to do with the fact that there is a 10 page piece in TIME magazine about Canadian bands right now. The front page of the NY Times entertainment section a month ago and a five page Spin article are both about Montreal. No wonder, man. We are supported by our Government. If you don’t have any money, and you don’t have any resources, you’re screwed. You could have a great song, and no one is going to help you with it unless you’re so blatantly commercial that someone is going to make a buck of you immediately. But the fact that the government gives out millions and millions of dollars every year to creative people trying to execute their vision is amazing. It’s why you have the quality of bands now that all have a unique sound, none of them are overtly commercial at all, and they’re all having success. It’s truly an amazing thing. There are only a few places in the world that support they’re artists like that. Scandinavia does the same thing; they really pump money into all they’re artists. It’s rare.

MVRemix: Was it fairly easy to access?

James Shaw: The first time I applied, it was just me filling out an application, and that didn’t go over so well. But we also sucked back then. Now there’s people who do it for us, it’s all kind of people involved with the label. It’s the same thing with Death From Above 1979, there’s people at the parent label at Last Gang, who sort of deal with all the grant funds.

MVRemix: You’re touring the UK with DFA this summer.

James Shaw: Metric and DFA have a lot of affection for each other musically, and personally. I like that when we did Canada with them they opened for us because at least at that time we had a little something more going on than they did. And now they got a lot more going on in the UK than we do so we’ll open for them. It’s very much done without ego, and that’s just rare in bands.

MVRemix: Who are your influences?

James Shaw: I don’t know. I came from such a bizarre musical background. I started playing trumpet when I was twelve, and until I was 20 I was going to be a classical trumpet player. I listened to records, but I was never really a record buyer, or had a collection. I knew U2. I knew what was going on in the mainstream realm, but I didn’t really know any underground music at all. Every one in the band is completely different. Emily comes from this crazy, other background of obscure, avant-garde jazz music that her dad was involved in. Where Josh and Jules both went to this school in Texas where neither of them studied music, but it was like a heavy duty music school and they were playing all around there, and they did some other music. For us there is no real, like, these are our influences; you can see them on our shirts and in our sound.