When you work with somebody for a long period of time, you develop a shorthand with everything.

You have to shelve a lot of your inspiration. There's only so much you can do with one record.

You just want to go back to those 70s albums. Even a lot of the 90s indie records were still done on tape, and you hear the difference.

Most of my early records were not cohesive at all, just collections of demos recorded in different years. 'Odelay' was the first time I actually got to go in the studio and record a piece of music in a continuous linear fashion, although that was written over a year.

I didn't want to be on a major label. I wanted all the attention and the noise to go away because I wanted to be something a little bit more substantial.

Technology was something I avoided when I started out - I didn't even have electric guitars. Only played acoustic.

It's hard to make music knowing that it's not going to be received by the listener in the way that it should be.