For me, I'm more of a songwriter than a guitar player or singer. And not having things to work on was really kind of nice.

It's really hard for me to capture this certain way of singing that sounds good to me. I don't really understand it, but hopefully some day I'll figure it out.

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.

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

There are certain recordings where my voice sounds good to me. Singing live I really enjoy, but I don't know how good it sounds.

That's one of those hazards of an interview: You get tired of your stock answer and you try to get creative and even play devil's advocate.

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.