Keeping fans loyal is a delicate balance. Therein lies the challenge for any band that's more than a couple albums deep. It's like, how do you continue to make records that are representative of who you are that your fans will recognize as your band, while still trying to push things forward and present new sounds for people.

I have always been very open and earnest about some things in my life, some things that are not directly in my life, but they're twirling around me at the time.

For me, a song doesn't really take flight until it has a lyric on it. ...Without a lyric that I'm happy with, it could be the greatest song ever melodically or arrangement-wise, but it doesn't have any resonance.

The late '90s were a really bad time for people trying to be rock stars, you know what I mean? It seemed like everyone was a one-hit wonder on the radio. We had friends who had a hit single on the radio and sold 500,000 records, and then they couldn't get arrested a year later. I had this feeling at the time that that was not possible anymore, so the idea of becoming the biggest band in the country—it seemed laughable. I felt that having those sort of ambitions was foolish, because there was no way that was going to be possible. If you saw it that way, you were just deluding yourself.

Liking interesting things doesn't make you interesting.

An ex-girlfriend once got upset when I told her that music is the most important thing in my life. It's more important than anyone else could ever be. I don't want to be overly dramatic and say it's the only thing that gets me up and keeps me going. But people in your life come and go. As you go through your life, you make friendships, you break friendships, you have relationships. Music is the one thing I've always been able to rely on.

We never sit down before we start making a record and talk about this new sonic palette that we are going to try to explore. We always let the record kind of reveal itself to us over time.