In an age where it seems there are as many rock bands as there are stars in the sky, what does it take to rise above the rest?

The answer is honesty, hard work and lunacy—at least, if you take it from Matthew Angus, frontman for The Fast Romantics.

“You have to be very honest these days because a lot of bands make a strategy as to what they want to sound like, who they want to be and what they want to project,” the 28-year-old said by phone late last month from his apartment in Calgary.

“I think that’s dangerous because you’re picking an identity and a sound for yourself out of a pool of hundreds of thousands of existing bands. It’s hard to be yourself when you’re trying to be someone else.”

Striving for honesty is precisely what the four-piece has been doing since they formed three years ago, rising out of the ashes of a previous musical project manned by most members of the current line-up.

With the addition of a new drummer in 2006 and a name change, The Fast Romantics took a new lease on their musical direction and started working on their self-titled debut album. It was released this past August.

Putting their social lives on the backburner, the band holed up in their self-financed Post/War studio for close to a year, allowing the creative process to be freed of unnerving studio fees and ticking clocks.

“It was long and sweaty…and sometimes difficult,” Angus said.

“We had a lot of time to focus on how we wanted it to sound like. Maybe it wasn’t practical from a financial standpoint, but we took the time to do it.”

The resulting effort is a collection of catchy, Brit-pop-infused rock tunes that caught the ears of legendary mix engineer Mike Fraser.

Fraser, who was working with AC/DC and Franz Ferdinand at the time, jumped on the opportunity to mix the record.

“That gave us a huge boost of confidence,” Angus said. “I don’t want to say it gave us big heads, but it made us feel this record is getting treated the way we wanted it to. We didn’t want it to be mixed or recorded in any way that hindered the sound (we were after).”

Besides Fraser, the band has also brushed shoulders with other notable acts, playing alongside Stone Temple Pilots, The Flaming Lips and The Stills.

“I think we found out that we are hard workers,” Angus said reflecting on their journey so far. “We can’t stop thinking about our band, whether it be musical or business-wise—we’re always working on this. We’ve lost jobs over it.”

So what keeps the band pushing to stand out amongst the other bands trying to make a name for themselves?

“Maybe a healthy dose of stupidity,” Angus said, only half in jest. “Maybe we’re a little bit crazy.”

“We always said the bands that make it are the ones that stick it out just a little too long to be rational. We’re very committed to making music a career and not just a one hit wonder, and certainly not a failure by any standards. We just picked this like anyone else picks something, and we’re not going to stop. We’re just stubborn.”

In the meantime, the band is growing some legs for the record by taking it across Canada before heading back into the studio for the follow-up, slated to be released next summer.

Published in Volume 64, Number 1 of The Uniter (September 3, 2009)