Your new record, ‘The General Strike’ was leaked in its entirety last month – can you explain how that happened? The thing is, I know who did it and I want to be angry at this person, cos’ this person was also someone I considered a friend. It was the principle of being unprepared for the birth of your child and then it’s born. But the good news is, people who’ve heard it say they’ve really enjoyed the record and that’s precisely why you write and record songs, in the hope that some people find some sort of solace inside of them. But it also makes you really want to strangle this person who leaked it! It’s a gift and a curse I suppose.
How do you feel about the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) debacle? With piracy so directly affecting your newest album, did this encourage you to support the Act? I feel that there were so many things tied into that legislation that it just didn’t really make any sense. The thing about piracy and the way people are dealing with piracy is that no-one is coming up with any new solutions. They are all coming up with the solution of punishing the people who use the technology, to slow it down and that’s just not gonna’ happen. You can’t stop technology from moving forward. The night our record was released, I was in Chicago with friends and they were having an argument about SOPA; and one of them was a strong proponent of it, he was a producer who said that he’s working so that bands can make money and not have to work in bars or whatever. And I said well that’s all well and good, except I’m in a band whose record leaked today and I got an email from a part of the world where the album isn’t going to be released, saying they heard the record and they love it. To me, that’s why you write songs, so people can find them and hear them and the fact that I got an email from South Indonesia; you know, there’s no record label there! The person only found it because that technology exists, so you have to throw your hands up and say that’s a positive. So, I’m open to the discussion, but I’m also open to the fact that A) It gives us a forum to reach more people and B) that we get to tour and have people come up to us and say “we didn’t buy your record, but we’re supporting your band by coming to the show” or buying a t-shirt or something like that. We have that dialogue with the people that are supporting us where we can say “download it if you want to”, but please support us in other ways so we can actually survive. When you’ve been a band for 15 years you start to get worried! You start to think, I have no skills as a human being other than this.
Originally you said that the record would be titled ‘Magnum’; now the record is called ‘The General Strike’, did the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011 have any impact on this? That was a great joke where the sarcasm was missed I suppose. Justin is a big fan of that movie Zoolander and Derek Zoolander’s signature move is called “Magnum”, so that’s what he was referring to; but that joke was missed!