I think whatever we've done as a band at The Clientele, we've done because it's so natural. Our "old" sound isn't really like any actual bands from old times. We take elements of past music styles and past sounds as a way to... this is going to sound very pretentious and perhaps overly thought-out, but as a way to strike chords of vague nostalgia, and strike chords of, "I've heard this before somewhere." That's what a lot of our music is about in terms of the words and ideas behind it, so we really use old sounds as a way to serve that agenda.

One of the great things about being in a band is that you meet so many other musicians who will turn you on to stuff you would never have otherwise found out about.

I'm a huge Boards Of Canada fan. They're my favorite contemporary band. The interesting thing about Boards Of Canada is, they use analog and digital recording techniques, and nobody really knows how they get their sound. But I think that very warm, enveloping analog sound.

I have the longing that all writers have for new ears to pour my words into.

When you're in a daze - whether it's from running or a hangover or whatever else - I think that ideas from your subconscious can slip through more easily. The way that I write songs, for what its worth, when I'm playing music, if it's good music it will bring images forward into my mind and then I'll write down what the images are and that becomes the lyrics. I think that process is just easier if the superego has just gone away in disgust for the day.

I think the music that's part of your heritage is what you spend a lot of your early life rejecting. The very idea of folk music would break me out in hives until I was about 28. But I think it's nice when you eventually do come back to it. It's like coming home, and you realize it wasn't so bad after all.

Cornelius Cardew's folk songs were very, very literal, and they were just about workers smashing their chains. It was like reading Das Kapital over a folk-song melody, and it's a spectacular failure, in my opinion.