When you get respect from the people who are buying your music and coming to your shows, there's an expectation that you have to live up to your own standards.

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.

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

There's a little less pressure in doing a solo tour, in some ways a simpler setup. A little bit more relaxed. But then also there's also - doing the big tours is exciting, because you get to put on the big show and everything. But I don't know if I would prefer one over the other. I guess it's no secret that I just don't like touring in general, but it's sort of the reality of the business these days.

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

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.