To me, Modest Mouse is one of the best bands ever. I actually wasn't surprised that they made it big. It's always weird to see it happen, and it happens so fast, all of a sudden songs are in the background on TV.

If you know that someone is going to hear what you're doing, you're always going to be self-conscious about it. In a way that's good; it spurs you on.

Sometimes songs need extra time and space to really play themselves out, and some songs it's like, this is all you need, a straightforward thing.

There are lot of bands that have too many songs, I think.

My whole view of music completely flipped over on its head. I grew up listening to punk rock, SST. I liked people that were making music that weren't necessarily very good at their instruments, it was more about the ideas they had than how well they could play and sing.

To me, Modest Mouse is one of the best bands ever. I actually wasn't surprised that they made it big. It's always weird to see it happen, and it happens so fast, all of a sudden songs are in the background on TV.

A lot of overdubs from the last couple of records had to do with me being insecure about the way my voice sounds or the way I play guitar. I would want to mask it with extra things, or keep every moment super exciting. With the newest record, I tried my best to back off, and if something wasn't interesting at every moment, or if my voice didn't sound that good, just let it go and accept it.