This record was written and recorded between January and October 2007 in our hometown of Montreal, Canada. For our previous albums, we traveled far and wide - from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Africa, to Byron Bay, Australia - feeling that the further we got away from home, the easier the inspiration for new songs was going to strike.

The original plan for Love At The End Of The World was to record it on a houseboat while floating down the Ganges. As it turned out, my wife and I had our first child, a little girl, at the beginning of 2007 and so instead, this became the first album we made in Montreal. As a songwriter, this forced me to reexamine the place I had known and lived in all my life with a different lens, looking under rocks I would otherwise have passed right on by. I wanted to try to see clearly the ways in which people had figured out to coexist in the tight quarters of the city streets. To reveal the friction and the tension which try to pull us apart, but also the moments of peace and redemption, defying the odds and keeping us all together.

This is what Love At The End Of The World struggles with, right from the first note - how we push ourselves to the edge of the precipice, hell-bent on self-destruction, only to glance to each side and see that we are not alone, that the capacity for love exists in all of us, and can save us.

We once again partnered up with producer Joseph Donovan, who worked on Chemical City with us. We were at high school together and formed our first band, the ill-fated and ill-named "Happy Death Men." The band broke up after being cut from the school talent show one time too many. But the roots run deep…and so, years later, we found ourselves making music together again.

I walked the length and breadth of Montreal, building the stories and melodies, drinking coffee and wine in significant quantities, changing the angles. After having been locked up for a couple of years, building the pressure behind the mental dam erected by months of touring, the songs came out in a flood. We shaped and harnessed them as a band in our rehearsal hall and then took them to the studio. We were trying to catch lightning in a bottle…

A few friends came in to add some colour to the mix. From Senegalese percussion players on "Fixed To Ruin", to the beautiful voice of Angela Desveaux on "Words & Fire" (I still believe she is the love child of Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, conceived after their legendary concert in Quebec), there was even a little baby crawling around the control room - the album kept taking on new dimensions.

So here it is, a twisted ball of chaos and light, a yell from the swamp, demons wrestled into a shaky submission. This is a pitched battle against the corruption of the soul and a reminder that there’s still love at the end of the world…