Their first full-length is called Mutiny! and their music video of the same name depicts Set Your Goals as swashbucklers battling pretentious record label execs. Put that way, you’d think this San Francisco sextet is a band of foul-mouthed rebellious misfits revolting against the music industry. In reality, they’re anything but.
Lead singer Jordan Brown and I are on the phone for the third time in one night. The band has made it to the Majestic Theatre in Detroit, completed sound check, and are getting ready to hit the stage and open for Anti-Flag while Brown and I are bonding over our mutual liking for all Green Day American Idiot music videos.
Set Your Goals have sometimes been labelled as “pop-hardcore” (too heavy for pop-punk, yet too cheerful and way too positive for hardcore), a description that seems to suit the band all too well, as it is fully embodied by their lead singer: Brown is ridiculously enthusiastic and talks a mile a minute, and is more Will Turner than Jack Sparrow, even though he may claim otherwise.
“What is a mutiny?” Brown asked when explaining what pirates have to do with the music business. “It’s a takeover from the inside, it’s a rebellion against an authority that you don’t necessarily agree with, or you want to make something change, you want to make an impact. The video idea was: we’re like this. We’re a young and fresh band, we’re shooting our first music video, and the label’s putting a bunch of money into us. They really want us to be the next big thing. But then we’re like, ‘You know what? We’re tired of this business.’ We just want to do our own thing, so let us be heard how we want to be heard.”
And mutiny is exactly what pirates do. Yet there seems to be no need for it on SYG’s part: the band has found home with indie label Eulogy Recordings, and so far they seem to be on the same page. “In no way did they take our songs, cut them up, and put a lot of pieces here and there,” Brown said. But this doesn’t mean that a lot of young bands don’t let themselves get exploited by labels – majors and independent alike.
“There was a lot of misinterpretation around the song “Mutiny!” The song is not about major labels, it is about the entire music industry,” Brown clarified. “The majority of people we’ve met in the major label industry are actually pretty sincere people.”
“I think that whatever business you’re getting into, you’re going to have the good and you’re going to have the evil,” Brown continued. “If there’s [a] band that’s doing something that really needs to be received by wider audiences [and a] major label can help you achieve that, then you have to feel it out and decide what’s right for your band at that moment.” He added that their tour mates Anti-Flag have never compromised their integrity since signing with a major.
Back to the piracy theme: although it happened by pure coincidence, the record Mutiny! was released on July 11, 2006, just four days after the Pirates of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest movie hit theatres. “We actually have a friend who was working on that movie,” Brown confided. “And he was like, ‘You know, that pirate movie’s coming out at the same time as your album,’ and we were like, ‘Oh no! That’s a trick!’ Then pretty much the whole last year revolved around pirates. But it was kind of funny, we had fun with it.”
The band is already planning not one but two follow-up videos. At the beginning of the year, Brown made a post on the band’s Myspace page, asking fans to pick between the more serious, melancholy-infused “Echoes,” and the fast-paced and upbeat “To Be Continued.” Brown says responses have been so great and so evenly split that the band decided to shoot both videos. The latter will be an entirely danced out performance, and from the sound of it, the production may rival that of Panic! At The Disco. The project is an ambitious one, and right now SYG are aiming at putting out a new t-shirt that would help finance the making of the video, which should be shot by the end of the year.
“We’re constantly setting new goals and achieving them,” Brown said, not mincing clever puns. “Right now our main focus for 2007 is just staying on the road.” Plans for the spring include a five-day tour of Mexico as well as a full Canadian tour with Daggermouth and No Trigger, followed by the Warped Tour and a taste of the other side of the Atlantic in the summer. “Pretty much just getting everywhere in the world to play for people who’d like to experience the music that we’re writing – that’s our main focus, that’s our goal!”
Set Your Goals perform at Club Lambi, 4465 St. Laurent on Wednesday, April 4. with Blind Witness, The Real Deal, The New Sincerity.
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