No-one wants to hear anything spoken in earnest anymore, unless it happens to involve unrequited, teenage love.

Early on I was a lot more unsure of myself on stage. When our band The Decemberists was getting bigger audiences I was more concerned about alienating them, so I wasn't as willing to take risks and do weird stuff on stage. But once you get more accustomed to it you tend to have more fun with it and not worry about being pilloried for acting out. Whenever you play in front of 400 or 500 more people than you're used to it's always a weird, transitional period.

No-one wants to hear anything spoken in earnest anymore, unless it happens to involve unrequited, teenage love.

I think the music should definitely underscore the sentiment of the song, and it can work for or against it. It has just as much power in creating a kind of perpendicular sentiment in the music, creating a nice friction that also plays up some of the tension in the song.

I wish I had a better range, but I really have a super-limited one. Barely a tenor, dips into baritone - that's about it.

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

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.