I took the batteries out my mysticism / 
And put them in my thinking cap

I saw that something changed in terms of the way I approach writing. I don't know. Before, everything was just sort of pieced together; and more and more nowadays I'll have complete songs - chords, lyrics, a melody - and we'll apply to those songs what we feel is required. That has happened much more on Humbug album than on any of the others.

A lot of peopletell me I'm a bit dreamy, but I like the idea of that. Of being somewhere else.

You can't worry what people think.

It was 2002, we all got guitars for Christmas and started playing in my garage that summer, rehearsed there and in a warehouse for a bit for about a year. We did our first gig in June 2003 and we played a few gigs in and around Sheffield for a bit then started doing gigs outside of Sheffield about this time last year, recording demos while all this was going on.

I took the batteries out my mysticism / 
And put them in my thinking cap

Songwriters always reminded me of that kid at school who would go around with his guitar, like, "Yeah, songwritin' man," looking wistful. That wasn't me - those kinds of people put me off.