Boys Night Out Don't Care If You Don't Think They Scream Enough Anymore

06/26/07 5:00pm

by Shehzaad Jiwani (CHARTattack)

Boys Night Out are back with a new album, but it's a far cry from 2005's Trainwreck. In many ways, it's a return to the more straightforward approach of their older material. And with far more focused and concise songwriting, it's their most fluid album to date. Just don't expect them to start screaming their heads off anytime soon.

"I don't think this record is entirely a pop or pop-punk record," guitarist Jeff Davis explains. "We were just really aware of what we were doing within the song structures.

"It's not like we sat down and said every song has to be a verse-chorus-verse structure like a Beatles song, but it does feel good to have a real song, as opposed to having an eight-minute mess where you can't tell what's going on."

"Especially with all of us coming from punk and hardcore backgrounds, we didn't know anything about structure," adds vocalist Connor Lovat-Fraser. "It's awesome. It's fun as hell, but at some point, you want to write a real song."

The band's self-titled third album's lighter musical direction sounds a lot different from the dark, moody tones on Trainwreck.

"I don't think that's new," says Lovat-Fraser. "After Trainwreck being so dark, we had a lot more upbeat songs in us that we wanted to get out.

"That's always been there. Even on our six-song EP, there's pop on there. There's pop structure and pop melodies. It's always been there."

It's been many years since the Burlington, Ontario boys were in straight-edge hardcore bands. In that time, they've grown out of writing the chugging hardcore that some of their old fans still cling to.

"I have a much harder time now writing songs that are all over the place, like a Beyond Hypothermia-era Cave In song," says Lovat-Fraser. "They make wicked songs, but I just have a hard time doing that. I can't write completely messy songs anymore."

Of course, coming up in a tightly knit local scene, they always have kids bugging them to revert back to their heavier days.

"There's always that element," the singer groans. "It blows my mind to this day that people are like, 'I sure hope there's a lot of screaming on this record! I sure hope it's gonna sound like this or that!'

"Music for us is a representation of our personal growth. If I'm not growing as a person and I'm still saying the same thing and I'm still as angry as I was seven years ago, with music being a cathartic thing, you're doing something wrong."

"Yeah, like, really," the guitarist says with a laugh. "That was like six or seven years ago.

"We're not going to put out that record again. If you like it, just listen to it. If they don't like the songs, just don't listen to it. We don't care. Don't send us message after message on MySpace calling us pussies because we don't scream anymore."

The band recently put out their Fifty Million People Can't Be Wrong EP, which featured two songs from their first release, Broken Bones And Bloody Kisses.

"The Only Honest Love Song" was retooled and revamped, incorporating more melodic elements.

"The idea to redo that song came from it being one of the screamiest songs we'd ever written," Lovat-Fraser explains. "Back then, I had no idea how to write vocal melodies.

"This was six years ago, that was one of the first songs we wrote. It always had these awesome guitar parts, but I had no idea how to sing to it, so it was easier to scream. It always bothered me, hearing that song, because I thought with singing it would work so much better."

"We caught shit for that, too," Davis adds. "The demo on the EP was so loose and heavy, and that's true and that's fine.

"We just wanted to redo those songs for fun, to give a different feel for them. The main reason we did it was because we wanted kids to know we were still alive. We weren't trying to make a statement that we weren't screaming away, we just wanted to make them more polished for fun. Lighten up, everybody."

Boys Night Out will play three Ontario shows before heading to the U.S. for a three-week tour with June and Olympia next month. Here are their Canadian dates:
June 28 Toronto, ON @ Reverb
June 29 Burlington, ON @ Burlington Music Centre
July 3 Barrie, ON @ Foundation w/Simcoe Street Mob and The Saint Alvia Cartel