Everyone in Seattle is a total pussy when it comes to snow. The whole city shut down, the place looked like an apocalyptic movie.

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.

Ironically, I like working with people.

I'm always writing music. I sort of do it obsessively, for good or for bad. It's good that it keeps me going, but it's bad because it really is sort of like an obsession where you can't stop sometimes and it'll keep you up at night and ruin your weekend.

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 was writing music when we finished the last Walkmen record, Heaven, and a few of these songs may have even been started before Heaven was done. With The Walkmen we all wrote a lot of stuff alone, but then we'd start collaborating with each other.