Amid a flurry of group and individual projects, Switchfoot is eyeballing a spring 2009 release for its next album -- the San Diego rockers first since 2006's "Oh! Gravity" and since leaving Columbia to start its own label, the ATO-distributed Lowercase People Records.
Switchfoot has been working in a studio it constructed in San Diego, chronicling some of the sessions via webcam on its Web site. "There are so many different directions we can go in," frontman Jon Foreman tells Billboard.com. "One of the songs has a (Led) Zeppelin feel. One of them has more of a Devo feel. So it's Led Devo, or something along those lines. I feel like the headspace we're in now, the glass ceiling's been shattered. We're excited to see how far we can take this thing."
Foreman says
Switchfoot has tried working with several producers, including Failure's
Ken Andrews and
Charlie Peacock, but ultimately decided to produce the album itself. "
I feel like we've got a fairly firm grip on what we want do,"
Foreman says, "
and I feel like we can get there on our own."
Switchfoot may have some new material to showcase when it sets out on the Music Builds Tour, a 23-show road trip supporting Habitat For the Humanity that includes fellow faith-based groups Third Day, Robert Randolph & the Family Band and Jars Of Clay. It kicks off Aug. 21 in Clarkston, Mich. The band has also taken an active role in helping Columbia compile a greatest hits album for release this fall, which will likely include "This Is Home," Switchfoot's contribution to the soundtrack of "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian."
"We want to make sure if it's got our name on it (that) it's a product we like," Foreman says, "so we're trying to steer (Columbia) in the right direction."
Foreman, meanwhile, has been busy on his own. He recently completed a series of four seasonal-themed EPs and is allowing fans to help him choose their favorite tracks for a compilation, "Limbs and Branches," that's also expected out this fall.
And he and Nickel Creek's Sean Watkins are putting the finishing touches on the first album by their side project, Fiction Family, which they hope to get out before the end of the year in front of an early 2009 tour.
Credits for the report to Billboard.com.
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