SFBG: What do you do there?

TH: I do graphics. I do a bunch of graphic design, but I also do… stuff. I’m trying to do more stuff that’s like interactive TV type things, making things where you can go to the Web site and design the opening for a show or something. Or having things were people are uploading videos and voting for the top ones.

But I’ve only been here for a little bit, and everything hasn’t happened yet.

SFBG: And how is that working out with the band being on tour?

TH: It’s OK. Things are pretty worked out.

Right now, in the long interim between the last full-length and this one, we’ve been retooling the band so that it fits into our lives as a whole. Two years ago I was either on tour, or sitting around waiting to go on tour again, and now I think we’ve sort of manipulated our band’s life so we can treat it as unprofessionally as we’d like. Which sounds somewhat loadedly sarcastic, but I think we formed the band in a regular ‘90s style just ‘cause we wanted to go play some gigs and stay at people’s houses and see their record collections.

But now our motivation is more the pleasurable part of playing shows, writing music, and being in a band. And less, “Boy, what if less people come to the show this time because we didn’t tour heavy enough?”

SFBG: When was the last full-length tour?

TH: Oh, I don’t know. Years ago. We did go in some tours in, like, Australia - exotic locales - for longer periods of time.

I think we were touring extremely heavily for a long time. And I think we have got the vibe and the spirit of showing up to a city the third time in a year, playing even at the same place, feeling like “Oh, this is gonna be awesome! We’re going to do this and that different,” and audiences had gotten inured to it, had gotten a little bit used to the operation. Definitely we stopped for what we want as a band, and what we want as performers. I think increasing the scarcity makes the whole thing work better.

SFBG: I noticed that there’s not station-to-station United States tour happening. Is that going to be scheduled, or are you guys going to do a couple cities here and a couple cities there?

TH: Cities here and there, I think. Guerrilla touring. Where will we show up next? It keeps the atmosphere at our shows really fun. We always have a good time even when we’re touring normally, but doing it more spotty makes the thing more crazy and fresh. I think our band is now operating in a neat way, but it’s pretty unconventional.

SFBG: Is that why you guys called the hiatus? Was it becoming a job?

TH: Yeah, that was a big part of it. It was really hard to explain without sort of tearing the whole thing apart and putting it back together again. Saying, “we’re just not going to go. We’re not doing a support, opening band slot for three weeks. We don’t care. We’d rather play shows - cherry-pick.” It’s the best way to tour, but totally unprofessional. We’re not playing a show if it doesn’t seem like something that seems fun to be doing.

SFBG: You make it sound like it’s some horrible thing.

TH: No, no, no, I think it’s an excellent thing. I say “unprofessional,” but - without being total hater, I defy the professionalism that’s invaded music.

SFBG: You’re not trying to be some kind of music career climber, like, “We’re going to open for the White Stripes so Les Savy Fav can be huge.”

TH: The band is a completely static operation. It’s completely separated from any kind of “you have to do this,” or “you ought to do this.” It’s entirely based on what pleases its members. The band exists for the pleasure of its members. Which I think is a little bit radical.

SFBG: Hedonistic.

TH: When we started there still was like, no prospect. No potential. You formed a punk band or an indie band just ‘cause you were really into other ones and decided “I’ll do it myself.”

I think now there’s a lot more new potential for a band to be like, “Oh, I’m going to start this band, and it’s a reasonable expectation that I can make some kind of money, living, or career out of this.” Whereas for us, even coming in on the tail end of - in the late ‘90s - on the tail end of a, you know, if you wanted anyone to hear your music, or if you wanted to even find out if you were good or not, you had to go on tour. There was no other way. You couldn’t afford to make enough tapes to mail to the whole world.

SFBG: And now people can just blow up on the internet. Like OK GO.

TH: Yeah, so, in that way there’s a lot more potential. I think Syd running French Kiss, he’s definitely seen an amazing upturn in the amount of management bands have. Even very small bands having a really considerate manager who’s making sure things go right.

It’s weird. Even now the idea of having a legit manager just seems absurd. The band operating in an unprofessional, inconsistent way is par for the course of being a punk band.

SFBG: I wasn’t really going to ask this, but it’s somewhat apropos with your mention of people forming bands to be successful - you don’t really fit the paradigm of an “indie rock frontperson,” which is to say a really skinny kid with floppy hair and eyeliner. When you guys first got together, did that ever bother you? It seems like you either enjoy it, or…you don’t care, obviously.

TH: I like it. In some ways it’s always protected us. There’s no scenario where our band sells out in a commercial way, because of me. Unless we can get someone to lip-synch for me, or not take photos. It helps you not make a mistake about what you’re in it for. I’m not saying that bands with all the members being extraordinarily handsome, some of them - there’s no reason why they don’t know what they’re in it for, but it’s easier to lose focus when other people are like, “We can help you do that, easily, with your hunky looks.”

SFBG: Have you ever been, “Well, I don’t look like a lead singer…”

TH: My parents weren’t too into music, and I wasn’t too into music, until I heard hardcore. And from there forward, the looks of a band were really secondary. For one, when you’re listening to really small regional bands, you can’t really tell what they look like. Initially, I couldn’t tell what they looked like in the shitty, photocopied zine. Whether they were good looking or bad looking had no bearing.

It basically was like, the punkers in high school were getting head-butted and were the biggest losers. You know, it’s like skateboarding culture. No one was like, “God, these skateboarders are really cute.” Like, a couple weird people thought skateboarders were really cute, but most people thought they were annoying and lame.

SFBG: Which brings us to the whole underground thing being prettied-up and marketable now. Certainly more than when you guys started in the ‘90s, it seems that the image is concocted with the band and it’s on the Internet instantly.

TH: No, things are gelled. Ten years before us, I can’t even understand how people booked a tour. Or before that even, stories of Black Flag booking a tour, and there’s no clubs to play your band, you just start cold-calling people.

We qualify as some of the last late bloomers of that scene. You know, booking a tour where you’re just randomly sending e-mails to people’s houses who you’ve heard have good taste and maybe they’ll have a party for you. I don’t think it happens as much. It got gelled because now, regional scenes don’t really exist as they used to, because people have access.

I think the early ‘90s with Seattle and Chicago and all these different regions where suddenly people were like, “Oh, they like this here, and it’s crazy down in Texas…,” and different towns having a different aesthetic was the beginning of self-awareness and self-packaging. Which, I mean, the packaging has made for some awesome bands, but it’s also made for some super-sucky ones.

SFBG: On the new record, the song “The Year Before the Year 2000,” you talk about the whole Y2K thing. In 1999 when everyone was worried about the computers crashing from the extra zero. It seems so naïve and quaint now. Because after 2000, there was September 11, Afghanistan and Iraq, the whole bird flu thing, global warming, and now the economy is in the dumps. Do you think doomsday is actually a possibility of some sort, or it’s just marketing?

TH: That song expresses my thoughts about it, which are, if there’s a doomsday, it’s gonna be a real long one.

I think that there was a high in ’99, where all we had was the Y2K thing to go for. There was this idea like, “Smoke up, man, ‘cause there’s no point.” You know, smoke everything, drink everything, we might as well finish everything here, because it’s all gonna go to waste when the world ends. The idea of Prince calling you to party with abandon because it’s 1999: it’s a lot easier to party with abandon when you think there’s no tomorrow when you’ll have a hangover and pay the piper.

This is also analogous to our band itself - to maintain a level of attachment, of engagement, that’s like what Prince calls for in “1999.” To maintain that level in a situation where it’s interminable, it’s a much tougher call. There’s also this sense of leaving the party early and then finding it got really awesome after you left. Or like, you die, and your spouse finds another lover.

No one wants to think that - you want everyone to die at once. You want the party to end with you. In 1999 there was this sense of like, “Dude, the world’s going to be over and we’re the last ones there. We don’t have to worry about things getting way worse because of things we did, or things getting way better and being like, shit, I wish I’d have been alive for an extra 50 years for when the spaceships took us to Mars.”

It’s harder to be like, “You know what? This is where you are. And when you die, everything’s going to keep going. The world’s going to find another lover to fuck and forget entirely about you.” It’s hard to be like, “That’s not going to make me any less passionate.” Not letting it get you down…

SFBG: Do you think people are constantly latching onto the next big doom thing? Now it’s global warming. I mean, there was that bird flu thing - what happened to that?

TH: Absolutely. Because it’s much easier to be like, “The sky is falling! The world is going to be over. Pack up your shit, finish your lunch, and get ready to die.” The world is not going to be over. Every little thing you do is going to have a repercussion that can play out for all of infinity.

I don’t know. I’m just a little nihilistic in my sense that there’s a stasis in the world. The world right now is as brutal as the medieval world was, as the caveman world was. There’s just as many assholes as there are nice people, there’s just as many…

SFBG: That we’re not really evolving morally or spiritually?

TH: Yeah, but that’s not a bad thing. That doesn’t mean as individuals you can’t go for the gold, reach for the stars. It’s easier to inveigh and complain against the entire world. Everyone I know can dedicate their entire lives to certain changes, and only the ones that were most immediate to them would be where impact was made.

Like, in our generation, we could create peace. Then we die, and our kids create war again. If you are a peaceful person, then maybe you could possibly have a peaceful kid.

SFBG: I was looking at the lyrics to the record, and it seems that they have a kind of Nietzschean, übermensch kind of tone to them. Not in any Aryan superman kind of way. Like in “Patti Lee,” where it says, “We used to be gods/ Now we’re so plain.” And in “What Would Wolves Do?,” and in “The Lowest Bidder,” especially - this idea that we’ve sold ourselves short and bought into a lesser existence.

TH: I do think that’s true, but I definitely think that it’s an individual thing.

I think that’s a signature element in our band’s atmosphere. It’s not a Polyphonic Spree kind of optimism, it’s more, kind of seeking out the bottom and changing your perspective, rather than changing situations or ignoring them. The conversation has taken a turn for philosophy, I think…

SFBG: Talk about the video contest for “The Equestrian.” Was that your idea?

TH: The band lays claim to all ideas. Where we came from musically, the idea of making a music video is just kooky, you know? When I look in the mirror at our band, I don’t see, for better or for worse, I don’t see a band in 2008 with, you know, whatever number of fans, and people buying our records and listening to us, and someone interviewing me.

I see a punk band playing in a basement, like just dudes. And so then, the idea of making a video has always seemed weird to us. And whenever we come up with ideas for videos, they’re always so contrived and conceptual that they’re impossible to execute.

SFBG: But you guys met at the Rhode Island School of Design. So you’re obviously visually oriented in some way. You would think videos would be part of your get-down.

TH: We’ve had people make videos for us, and we’ve done videos of ourselves. I’d rather make a short movie than a video. I don’t know if you ever saw on YouTube, we made a fake, joke documentary when we played this Arcade Fire, LCD Soundsystem show in New York last summer.

SFBG: What’s that called?

T: It’s called Les Savy Fav’s Big Break.

Basically, we booked this show, and then like all of the sudden my sister, who has no interest in the band, and coworkers who nothing about my band all of the sudden were going, “Wow. Boy, guys, I guess they’re on the way up.” We’re not on our way in any direction. So, based on my sister-in-law saying “Holy kamoley, this is big, “ we made this video where we all pretend it’s our big break.

That’s what is interesting to us. The music’s the music, and visual design is visual design. I’m a little more passionate about album cover art, and our T-shirts and things like that. I think music video...especially because the tropes of music video don’t move me, or us…so the idea having your fans, like.... We can’t decide on a music video. We couldn’t decide on actual, functioning language for the name of the band. We definitely can’t settle on a music video.

SFBG: Who voted on the winner? Did you guys vote for the winner?

TH: No, it subtly did it by itself. We just said whatever video had the most views multiplied by the number of stars that people had given it.

SFBG: What do you think about that the song is so overtly sexual and it has a little kid singing it?

TH: I think it’s totally perfect. I wish that we could somehow invert the paradigm of violence and sex in the media, so that as much brutal violence as you can see on TV, instead you could see that much passionate sex. So I don’t see anything wrong with that. On that note, a little girl dry-humping a toy pony to a completely sex song…

SFBG: In a very Madonna-esque, “Like a Virgin” way.

TH: Yeah, but if it was the exact same thing with her running around with a machine gun, people wouldn’t even think twice about, “Isn’t it weird that it’s a kid?”

SFBG: Do you think that you end up with people who really like listening to your albums, but don’t like seeing you because the find it dissonant or something?

TH: Well, maybe. I think live performance sort of begs to be dismissed. From the way I look to the way I perform weirdly undercuts what everyone’s doing musically?

SFBG: Has the rest of the band ever been bothered by that? Or even pointed that out, like, “Would you mellow out?”

TH: No. Everybody likes it. It’s something we’re totally aware of and I feel like we’ve cultivated. At the same time it’s definitely weird.