Matt Mays (second from left) and his merry band of Spanish naval weapons, fresh from exile

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Pengrowth Saddledome

Absence may make the heart grow fonder, but it can also make the mind go a little crazy. This was the case when the lead vocalist and guitarist for the band Matt Mays and El Torpedo banished himself to England in order to focus on recording and producing their first new album in three years. The much anticipated follow up to his band’s stellar self-titled 2005 release, Terminal Romance demanded nothing less than perfection from Matt Mays, who cut his teeth playing with folk-rockers The Guthries. This period of self-imposed exile was a lonely time for the singer-songwriter, who has worked so hard to share his craft with others, and he is quick to draw comparisons between his own experiences and those of a career mariner or incarcerated felon.

“It was like being in jail — recording jail,” says Mays of his time in the verdant English countryside. “The place we stayed was like an old abandoned Boy Scout camp with only bunk beds to sleep on, but it was located near our recording studio. The studio itself was a former bomb shelter, which was rather weird in itself. I arrived two months ahead of everyone else, and I was starting to go a bit nutty on my own. It was testing, like being at sea alone for a month. We were just looking to be isolated from the rest of our lives, our routines, friends, girlfriends and wives, whatever. We wanted to have only one thing on our minds, but it ultimately made us a little crazy in the end.”

With distractions kept to a minimum, Mays set about sorting through 18 tracks and narrowing them down to 11 for the final cut; reworking each song with the same care and consideration he had used when writing them in the bustling cafés of Brooklyn. By the time guitarist-vocalist Jay Smith, drummer Tim Baker and bassist Andy Patil joined him at their British hideaway, Mays was more than ready to kick things into high gear and lay down some live takes in the studio. A slight detour from their previous roots-rock round-up, Matt Mays and El Torpedo, and its breakout hit “Cocaine Cowgirl,” Terminal Romance unfurls itself as a multi-act play; from the swaying groove of “Tall Trees” to the ’80s-inspired Jim Carroll ode “Rock Ranger Record,” each song is a vignette that functions as part of a greater vision.

“We don’t wear our influences on our sleeves anymore,” Mays says. “The new album is less rootsy than what we’ve done in the past and more of a straight-up rock sound. The songs are all tied together and seem to have become a theme on their own. It was like ‘Poof!’ It decided to be an album, and I couldn’t fight it. You have to give a work like that every opportunity to present itself. We play live in the studio, so it was just a matter of trying take after take and giving the songs a chance to come alive. It’s like raising a child. Now it’s out there forever. I’ll die, our world will overheat, but the song goes on.”