Sam Roberts wants you to dance

Sam Roberts (second from left) and his band (Credit: Rounder Records)

Here in the U.S., ask most people to name a rock act from Montreal and they’ll probably come up with Arcade Fire. But ask a Canadian the same question, and they’re just as likely to mention Sam Roberts.

In 2002, Roberts came seemingly out of nowhere to emerge as one of his country’s hottest young talents, thanks to a self-produced EP, “The Inhuman Condition,” that became one of the bestselling indie releases in Canadian history. His third album, “Love at the End of the World,” debuted at No. 1 on the Canadian charts last May and finally gets a proper U.S. release this February on Rounder Records (home to this year’s Album of the Year Grammy-winner, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’ “Raising Sand”). Thanks to a raucous lead single (“Them Kids”) with an eye-catching video and a great Strokes-meets-Springsteen sound, it might be Roberts’ best shot yet at reaching a wider American audience.

We called Roberts at his home in Montreal on the eve of a U.S. tour, and talked about how fatherhood and a desire to get the kids dancing inspired his latest album.

Where are you right now? At home?
I’m in Montreal, and it’s minus 12 degrees outside and there’s four feet of snow outside my door right here. But there is a beautiful blue sky, so I try to take some good from it.

This was the first album you recorded in Montreal?
That’s right.

What did you have against recording close to home before?
I don’t know. [Laughs] That’s a good question. I don’t think it’s necessarily that I had anything against it; I think it’s just that I always associated writing music with movement and travel. That’s just always been a part of the experience for me. To go and be on the road, seeing the world in all its different shapes and faces, and having that translated into music and into words. So I think that’s what kept me going before. And then the birth of my little daughter is what kept me rooted to Montreal this time.

Was being a new father a pretty heavy influence this time around?
Absolutely. It’s a fundamental shift that occurs, I think, in how you relate not just to your wife and child, but to the world around you. I’m now the protector and guardian and guide of a new life, and certainly that shift, that change, was basically the guiding principle behind the record. It didn’t come out necessarily as wide-eyed, gaga parent; in fact, it sort of transformed into something else quite visceral and at times disturbing. I think I was forced to see as truthfully as I possibly could: where are we headed? What kind of world is going to be there for her when she’s grown up?

I know that in Canada, you guys are used to playing arenas and bigger venues, and it definitely shows: the one time I saw you play a smaller club here in the States, you were gesticulating and working the crowd like it was a stadium show.
Well, I think if anything, we didn’t learn that playing stadiums; we learned that playing small clubs in Montreal. That’s just how it came out. Maybe it was our heroes, maybe it was watching a bit too much Led Zeppelin tour footage or the Rolling Stones or whatever it was, but to me, that’s just what made the most sense. Maybe it did help us in Canada when we did sort of graduate to the bigger venues…where we could actually strut our stuff stadium-style in an actual stadium, instead of a smoky closet, underground, beer-stinkin’ venue in downtown Montreal.

In the song “Them Kids,” there’s a repeated line, “The kids don’t know how to dance to rock ‘n’ roll.” Do you wish more people danced at your shows?
Well, you know, it’s a tough one. Sometimes I used to gauge it that I wasn’t satisfied with a show if people weren’t dancing. And then it just seemed like this phenomenon was sweeping the nation, that people just don’t know how to move anymore, you know? Now, I’m just sort of resigned to it. That’s where, I guess, the statement originated from, but I suppose it’s meant on a few different levels.

I also get the sense in that song that you’re kind of playing a character. You’re playing an aging rocker who’s worried that he’s no longer relevant.
Yeah, absolutely. I think there’s the potential for that aging rocker in all of us. I think we all acknowledge in our own way that that existential crisis is looming large in our future. That’ll we will have to confront the possibility of being sort of insignificant and unimportant to the youth of today. I figured I’d better just address it as early as I possibly could in my songwriting career and just get it out of the way.

And when you’re 60, you’ll still be able to perform it.
Exactly. It’ll be even more poignant and more to the point when I’m 60.