Toronto-based band Crush Luther will be releasing their album on iTunes for a pay-what-you-can price from Sept. 29-Oct. 13. The Charlatan’s Larissa Robyn Johnston sat down with the band’s lead singer, Luther Mallory, to discuss the new album, stealing music and the Jonas Brothers.

The Charlatan (TC):  What made you decide to sell your new record at the pay-what-you-can price?

Luther Mallory (LM): It was sort of a label decision and a label suggestion, but it seems to make sense in that people are going to take it anyways so you might as well give them an option to pay a little bit for it. . . . I mean our first record was purchased a few thousand times and downloaded 20,000 times.

TC: How do you feel when people decide to take your album for free when it’s something you’ve worked so hard on as a band?

LM: That’s a grey area on that one because I’m not offended by it. Often I’d rather people just download it if that’s the way they’re going to hear it. It seems now there’s like a finite amount of music listeners who are willing to buy music, and that’s a small amount, and everyone else is going to download it if you want them to or not. They’re going to rip it off the Myspace and somebody’s going to put it on Limewire and it’s a horrible rip of the record so you might as well give it to them for free.

TC: When this concept is mentioned, many people think of Radiohead because Radiohead did this. How much inspiration did they have on you?

LM: I guess that’s where the idea came from, sure. They can do that because they’re Radiohead, and we can’t really [do it] and have probably the same amount of success as them with it. But like I said, it’s just giving people the option rather than stealing it.

TC: When people have this option, I guess it’s a bit of an honour system, but do you think they’re going to take advantage of it and take it for free?

LM: Yeah.

TC: Even your best fans?

LM: No, not best fans, no. But a lot of people will, absolutely. I mean, I get it and I don’t get it. It’s stealing music and it’s not a tangible thing. People don’t really equate it with really stealing, it’s just kind of like half stealing. . . . I get that, absolutely, so people will take it and I don’t care.

TC: When people do take it for free, or when they do have the option of paying and they decide not to pay anything, do you find it puts a certain value on your music? Like, if people don’t pay, does that mean your music doesn’t mean anything?

LM: No, I don’t think so because that’s the industry now. I mean, there’s a whole generation of people that are starting to listen to music now that have always known nothing but downloading music for free. It’s been around that long. I don’t think people are giving that much thought really.

TC: Is this a step toward not making hard copies anymore?

LM: Probably not. I mean I’d like to always do that because I am a music fan, I am one of those finite people who does like to purchase music and have the hard copy. In five years, I’d like to be just doing vinyl and forget the CDs in store because it’s the music store that’s going out more than anything.

TC: It’s been said that you have an indefinable sound. As the main face of Crush Luther, how would you define your own sound?

LM: I have called us before, to coin a lame subgenre, called us fringe pop which is really stupid and it’s almost embarrassing to say, but just for the sake of the explanation, it’s kind of marketed like pop but it’s never hits [that we make]. . . . It’s like fringe pop in that it’s sort of pushed like a pop band and we certainly have the aesthetic in certain ways of a pop band. We’re not any pop band in the sense that we’re putting out these gigantic hit singles.

TC: One of the biggest pop bands write now is the Jonas Brothers, so how would you compare yourself to the Jonas Brothers?

LM: Well I have sweatbands for eyebrows like Joe Jonas does.