I used to struggle a little bit with the idea of how to separate singing from acting and entertaining.

Big, evocative words get thrown around, and people can sing along to passionately as if the lyrics just materialized out of the ether, largely because they don't ever seem to coalesce into a writerly voice.

Kaputt was just a record that did really well for us, and therefore our record label and our booking agent said that we should go out and take our message to the world.

I force myself to care about the music end by wrestling with it for years.

I think the more removed I feel, the more I warm up to the role of singer.

I'm not that conscious of my writing, so pacing the lyrics doesn't really enter the picture.

When I go to a show, all I really want is to hear a performance that sounds legitimate, and not just going through the motions. I'm not sure any amount of jumping up and down really persuades me in either direction.