In the 1950s, Elvis Presley was the King of Rock and Roll. To this day, he’s still known by that moniker – but rock and roll is now very different.

There is no reigning King, but there are some Kings, perhaps in an act like Switchfoot, the alt-rock quintet from San Diego, California, that took over the pop charts two years ago with its major label debut, The Beautiful Letdown.

Appropriately, the two acts are coming face to face at the Sony BMG offices in downtown Toronto. “In the Elvis room,” observes Switchfoot drummer Chad Butler as he takes in his surroundings, a room decked out in Elvis memorabilia. “This is where the action happens.”

The action today for Butler and his bandmate, bass player Tim Foreman, is an interview with andPOP, sandwiched between more interviews and a packed concert at night. The band has just released Nothing Is Sound, the follow-up to the two and a half-million-selling Beautiful Letdown, earlier this month. It debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 album chart, marking Switchfoot?s highest charting album position to date, and they?re now excited to unleash the new material to live audiences on tour.

?It?s different to be playing these songs for an audience that?s familiar with them,? says Foreman, reclining in one of the three leather sofas positioned around the Elvis room. ?Actually getting to play eight or 10 new songs is something that really excites us after playing the same songs for the last two or three years.?

On Nothing Is Sound, Switchfoot?s fifth album, the band again delves deep into a number of social issues, from the role of government in ?Politicians? to sex and materialism in ?Easier Than Love.? They are one of the few bands on the mainstream music scene today to be consistently making socially conscious records. Foreman credits this to the two years Switchfoot spent touring almost non-stop in support of the Beautiful Letdown.

?I think [touring] is as good of an environment as any to write songs in,? says Foreman. ?It?s such a polar environment, where you?re on stage and a thousand people are singing along, and then you walk off stage and you?re all alone in a city that you don?t know. I think that kind of manic reality brings out different parts of life that we?re trying to figure out.?

It?s also why Nothing Is Sound, like Switchfoot?s previous albums, has retained their signature sound: gritty and a little rough around the edges. Recorded while the band was on the road, songs were cut on airplanes, in garages, on laptops ? whatever was convenient when an idea popped into someone?s head.

?We didn?t have that luxury, really, to set aside a chunk of time in the studio,? explains Butler, but says some of the band?s most memorable creations came when you would least expect them to. ?I remember one moment, we were on an airplane at 30,000 feet going to Malaysia and Jon was singing into his laptop,? Butler says. ?He had headphones on, singing into the microphone in his computer, and there are snippets like that from our travels that made it onto the record.?

The band would then test out what they had worked on at the show that night, making it easy to see whether they?ve come away with a hit or a miss. ?I think working on an album live forces it to have a lot more of that live energy, which is so hard to capture into ones and zeros,? says Foreman. ?Because of that, this record is a lot more high energy rock than we?ve done before.?

Rock and roll though, has long been associated with a number of vices (sex and drugs, just to name a few) so it may be surprising to some new listeners how open Switchfoot is to addressing religion, and in particular, Christianity, in their music. But unlike Elvis, whose gospel roots were traded in for slick (and allegedly sinful) dance moves, Switchfoot has successfully merged their faith with mass musical appeal.

While it?s clear many of the band?s songs do talk explicitly about God, Foreman is quick to point out he is not here to preach. ?I think we ask a lot more questions than we give answers,? he says. ?We write music ? just honest songs ? trying to figure out the world around us. I think that?s something anyone can relate to. At the same time, a lot of my favourite artists, whether it?s Bob Dylan or Bob Marley, were coming from a spiritual place, or at least a place with belief, and I think we?re no different.?

Their faith will undoubtedly remain a powerful presence in their music in the future, but the band also hopes to continue finding inspiration by exploring different parts of the world. The fourth track on the new record, ?The Shadow Proves The Sunshine,? came out of a visit the group made to South Africa, and is a snapshot of what it?s like to be going on nothing but hope, which goes well with the general theme of loss, pain, and sadness that runs throughout Nothing Is Sound.

But don?t think that means this album is only suitable for your CD player on rainy days after a bad break-up. ?Ultimately, I do think it?s a hopeful record,? says Foreman. ?But in order for hope to be real, it needs to be set against the backdrop of reality, which is often dark. And the hope needs to go beneath that, to get under your skin, and you have to get your hands dirty.?






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