I enjoy making music alone, and I like keeping my options open for how I release my own songs.

I'm certainly not a lyricist first. I prefer doing it intuitively and not really thinking about it so much.

I grew up not really listening to guitar players. Especially when I was studying music, I was just interested in piano players and arrangers and composers; I came to playing in a band from the perspective of someone who never expected to play guitar in a band.

I enjoy making music alone, and I like keeping my options open for how I release my own songs.

I was pillaging a lot of music that had nothing to do with guitar playing, using a lot of strange tunings and voicings and chord structures that aren't really that natural to the guitar; I ended up developing a harmonic palette that's not particularly natural to the guitar because I was always trying to make my guitar sound like something else.

I enjoy making music alone, and I like keeping my options open for how I release my own songs. But everybody in Grizzly Bear is full of ideas. So it's kind of boring to come to the band with a complete song and be like: "Here's what I want you to do." With this record, we wanted to make everything feel like everyone - music that we could never do on our own. That's a real gift, and it's one of the best things about being in a band like this.

Our band doesn't like pressure or timelines. We like to be in a casual environment where everyone is happy with their surroundings. It's not like being in Brooklyn - if you're somewhere beautiful like upstate, you can walk outside to take a moment. It's a big part of our functioning.