That's another thing in Alice Munro: it's always, like, some middle-aged woman who is going to cheat on her husband, and there's that moment where she decides to take an extreme risk. It's always after an extreme risk where life really happens for Alice Munro.

"Face Again" is actually the most George Saunders-y song. Basically the verses, I'm describing a world where love is being killed, and then in the first chorus, I'm sort of protesting it. It's like, "I don't think you know what's best for me." And then by the end, it's like I've given in, and it becomes very desperate.

Our present era, to my mind, is characterized by a profound forgetting of the past. "The future, the future, the future." The 21st century, all the technology obsession.

Every time I think that I've pierced through the simulation, every time I feel like I've written something authentic, it feels like I then sort of lose my footing with it.

I didn't sit down and write a song like, "I want to write a song about this," but I just spent so much time living in this affectively charged space of the live show, with its risks and the incredible reward that comes from people knowing me, recognizing me, affirming me. And then I would wake up in the morning and have an eight-hour drive where I would read George Saunders and listen to Grouper and Pure X. And you bond so much with your tour-mates and your bandmates because it's this weird, quite desperate way of living.

I'm cool with being the sad guy, but I don't want to be the guy who nobody wants around because he's so miserable.

The interesting thing about doing press is that I learn what the album is about - I now know, a year later, looking back, what was on my mind at the time.