Living in war, and being a wartime band, I don't think there's any way that can't somehow influence the songwriting.

You can't really come into a concept record objectively, because you immediately associate it with Yes, stuff from the 1970s that punk rock kicked against, the pretentiousness.

It is better to live presently. By living thus, perhaps we can learn to understand the nature of this fragile coexistence we share with the world around us.

I don't feel like we're setting ourselves up to be exclusive. I don't want to set up an attitude where we're telling people 'You can't listen to our music if you don't have a college degree.

All instruments sound fantastic in a church.

When I first started writing these kind of songs that would eventually become Decemberists songs, I was writing them because I knew that nobody was listening at the time and that it wouldn't hurt to challenge myself and get weirder and see if I could alienate more people

There's some things there that you just have to draw the line. Some people are just not going to like it. We would hope that everybody would like it.