Say Anything just recently finished recording their new record and follow-up to 2009’s self-titled album. The album will be titled Anarchy My Dear and will be released via Equal Vision Records in early-2012. Max Bemis recently did an interview to discuss the new album in great depth. You can read the full interview here and a snippet of it below by clicking “Read More”.

Would you say the music is a little bit rawer?
I was in a pretty weird place when I wrote …Is a Real Boy. I was fully manic, doing drugs and living this crazy, young man’s life. Then I reeled it in for a while cause I had to get healthy, and now I’m a happier person. Basically, the first three records were kind of the story of a guy who grows up, comes into his own and realizes he doesn’t have to, like, destroy himself to be happy. And I sort of ended up happy in the storyline, so to speak, of the last few records. That chapter of my life is sealed, because I’m married. I’ll hopefully never have to write a song again about trying to find love; I’ve already found that and I’m really happy when it comes to that part of my life. I’m a reasonably healthy person and try to keep stable.

So it’s no longer about coming into my own; it’s more about what do I think of the world, what are the changes I’d like to see, what do I think of life, how do I experience life. So it is more raw in the sense that it has that early quality of rebellion. That’s the main thing I would put out there in terms of describing this record, because it does have a concept: coming out from the pack, rebelling and choosing to make your life your own and not have your mind be controlled by society.

I know a million bands have written about that, but I’d like to think we have [a couple of things] to lend toward that topic. First, we’re doing it in a very jubilant fashion, so it’s kind of like, if you would combine Sex Pistols with Guns n’ Roses in the [thematic] sense. Because it’s all about having a good time and being triumphant; you can really hear it on the record, the mood we were in when we were making it was totally triumphant. But then it does have that anger and that rebellion in it.

A lot of bands who tend to sing about political stuff or sociopolitical stuff tend to get super-dark and preachy, but this record is about kind of living it and not letting your anger towards everything control you; it’s about rising above it. I’ve heard a lot of kids asking for us to write that angry, edgy record. I think I was able to finally do that without sacrificing, without it being this false pursuit of who I once was when I was 19, stoned  and hating myself. This is about, “What do I really think of the world around me, and what do I want to do now that I’ve sort of grown up?”

So many musicians are facing the same thing: “Now that my personal life’s in order, what do I write about and how do I write about things?” Now that your mind is clear, you can actually comment and see the stuff around you.
Totally. I think there are many musicians who found love and stability to some degree and were still able to write awesome stuff, whether it’s [Bruce] Springsteen or John Lennon. And I look up to a lot of people. A lot of my friends in bands are getting older and have families now. If you even look at Chris [Conley] from Saves the Day, who wrote this record which is basically all about that, all about having these things in your life and still trying to find yourself, and there’s always a struggle.