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.

The first ones I played were in New York at Joe's Pub; I played four shows, but I did something like 30 interviews and a couple radio shows in the mornings and completely blew out my voice. It kind of sucked.

When you spend your whole life traveling it does get really tedious and exhausting.

I'm really not into the idea of just faking songs with a synthesizer. That just isn't the music I'm making at all.

When we got to the step when we'd normally start collaborating, we started having these talks about how it was not worth getting together. Getting together just didn't feel very inspired, and doing it alone did.

I feel really personally connected to all of the songs, so stepping back is really hard.

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.