The great thing is that when you hire string players you always get really great players. I don't know why that is.

I felt like I could get away with calling it Black Hours. That could easily be the most depressing record ever written, but because there is this sense of fun throughout the whole thing I felt like I could get away with it. Like "5 A.M."; that song's in a minor key and I'm just wailing away and it could have been just wallowing depression, but it's not.

I think I got interested in singing without being too over-the-top. I was more calmly singing the words - which I thought had really come a long way. I thought they were worth singing clearly.

I write songs now I look at my strengths and I start there. In The Walkmen, we'd start with the live stuff.

The funny thing is that the studio that we recorded in was the same studio that Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole used to warm up their voices in before they went across the street to CBS Radio. The owner has preserved it exactly the way it was in 1925. It was such a perfect coincidence that we were doing music inspired by that stuff in that room. It was incredible.

You look back and see pictures of yourself, or hear an old song, and you know where that came from or why you were working on that - but you don't want to do that again. You don't necessarily hate it, but you're a very different person now, so, in that way you do.

You're always trying to find new stuff and new inspiration. If you don't really push and you don't try something that feels exciting, then it's not worth doing.