One thing about hanging out with a baby is that you can remember a little bit better what it was like to be a kid, and all the mystery that came along with it.

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.

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.

I'd rather have a strong career, playing and selling records to a loyal audience, then having one record that exploded. That would be devastating.

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.

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.

I have a conflicted relationship with musicals, because I think the music itself can be so horrendous. It's an industry that relies on appealing to a mainstream culture in order to survive.