Finger Eleven comeback looks to bring the good times

Finger Eleven has done a lot of growing over the last decade (though, to date, the Canadian alt-rock band still only has one extra digit to its name).

“We all became dads. That changes perspectives,” lead singer Scott Anderson says.

The Juno Award-winning group — made up of Anderson, his brother Sean, Rick Jackett, James Black and Steve Molella — recently released Last Night on Earth, its eighth studio album and first batch of new music since 2015.

The production break was necessary, but unintentionally long.

Originally known as the Rainbow Butt Monkeys, Finger Eleven formed in Burlington, Ont., in 1990 and found mainstream success during the aughts with radio hits such as One Thing and Paralyzer.

It was a bittersweet period of major opportunities, heavy touring and big burnout.

“There was a point around the late 2000s where we didn’t see home for, like, a year-and-a-half and it was truly exhausting and difficult to enjoy, but that’s success for you; you’ve gotta strike when the iron’s hot,” Anderson says.

The band continued performing live, but less frequently. Parenthood and life offstage soon began to take precedence.

While Anderson still resides in Burlington, a city outside Toronto, it was hard to collaborate with bandmates who had moved elsewhere.

“Working remotely wasn’t working out. We would get together and go to a cottage and take songs in different directions, but ultimately what really ended up working out was creating a stricter schedule,” he says.

That meant meeting three days a week in the basement of drummer Molella (a newer addition to the band) until Last Night on Earth was completed.

The record, released earlier this month, takes a more optimistic tone than the angst of Anderson’s earlier lyrics.

“We’ve left the volume up for the most part, but there’s less negativity and that’s by design. Some of the songs were a little too much of a downer. I tried to challenge myself and restructure some lyrics and ideas and say, ‘What if I wanted to be more positive?’” he says.

He points to the song Cold Concrete as an example. The groovy, guitar-driven track lived on a hard drive for years as an angry, “me against the world” ballad.

In the reworked version, the subject under attack is Anderson’s own pessimistic outlook, instead of an imagined external enemy.

Touring also feels lighter these days. Finger Eleven spent much of last year on a U.S. reunion tour with longtime labelmate Creed.

“It’s more amicable than it has been in different eras of Finger Eleven. Nobody’s up partying until 2 or 3 a.m. and, like, ruining the bus,” Anderson says, preparing to hit the road for the band’s Canadian tour with Headstones and the Tea Party, which stops in Winnipeg on Monday.

As the dressing-room-music guy, Anderson’s packing list includes a portable speaker and a curated queue of music downloads — a replacement for the CD binders of yore that used to crowd his luggage.

Other essentials include a vocal steamer, special throat tea, a video game console and a favourite pillow.

“You can’t trust bus pillows, you can’t trust hotel pillows. Sometimes you get a bunch of lumpy bulls—- and it’s just not going to work,” he says.

Like Creed, which has found a new generation of fans thanks to social media and a surge of ’90s nostalgia, Finger Eleven’s audience has also started shifting younger.

“People are bringing their whole families to shows. It’s so special, I love it,” Anderson says.

While Last Night on Earth signals a comeback era for the band, the frontman says concertgoers can expect a big arena show that celebrates the new while paying homage to the classics.

“You can’t ever take the fans for granted,” he says.

“I think sometimes (listeners) move on from a band and it’s hard to go back, but I hope they hear some old-school Finger Eleven in this new record.”

eva.wasney@winnipegfreepress.com