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

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

Pop music has always adopted the style of marrying upbeat melodies to dour lyrics.

All instruments sound fantastic in a church.

It's hard for us to talk about how we disdain file-sharing when in fact it probably has been a great resource for us.

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 like all sorts of things, not necessarily just Victorian. Even though I tend to read a lot of Victorian novels, I like a lot of contemporary stuff.