I find listening to music in terms of influences, and trying to keep up with what's going on, is sickening! I mean, I'm not deliberately musically illiterate. But I have a pretty serendipitous approach to it.

It's pretty awesome to be in a band with your wife! The tour, it beats you down, and we can just share that, and sometimes revel in the experience. If she wasn't here, or she was just here as a civilian, she maybe would feel uncomfortable.

It's sort of cheesy to introduce that to the drums - those dings and dongs and bell sounds. That's definitely one of the reasons people are like 'oh yeah, they sound like Tom Waits, with those trashcan drums.' But at the same time, it sounds so good! And it introduces this... I mean, it's not tuned, but somehow it adds this extra layer of melodic texture.

People are intended to resist symbolic interpretation, as well. At times, they break through - there are little hints of 'this song is about this,' but if you were to come here and be like, 'well, I've got the lyrics right here, let's go through 'em,' that wouldn't really work!

Ten people who are into our music is better than three hundred people who are just standing there.

Live is best. You have movement, and I think we should do as much as we can to put that sense of movement in the recorded music.

Bruegel has these paintings of people just... interacting with each other. And there's this special wink - it's not a celebration of nature, it's people that are mongrels, and half-wits, and they're doing terrible things. I don't know, it just seems like something worth singing about.