I think that a lot of dystopian literature tends to be really moralizing and just doesn't tend to give credence to the importance of the sentimental. Maybe it says, "We need love in this world," but it's always this tough, strong statement.

Sometimes I'll go out to say hi to people, and I'm just not ready for it. It feels too weird, too intense.

I don't have one thing I go back to, but we listen to a lot of music in the bus, and we always get a few songs or a few records that end up being themes for the tour. On tour I read all of George Saunders' short stories and all of Alice Munro's short stories. George Saunders is who has taught me about this question about whether or not love is possible in the contemporary world, with all of its simulations and all of its pop and divergences and all of the confusion and distraction. Whether or not contemporary reality is actually hospitable to love.

I've come to realize that most of my intellectual postures and a lot of my intellectualism is super defensive and really symptomatic of basic fears. My one thing with the record is that I wanted to make something alien that wasn't alienating. And I think that the last thing I want is to dedicate my life to something which renders me further and further from being at home in my life - progressively more alienated and separate from myself.

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.

George Saunders is outside of Chicago too. I've met him a few times, actually. I really like him a lot. He's a really sweet guy. He's a big fan of my music now, too. I spent an enormous amount of time reading his work.

Fiction can produce truth, and truth can be false. What does it mean to say that it's true that, what, two out of six people in this city are starving? That's true, but that is only true because the conditions we live under are completely wrong - that should not be true, and it is. And in something like Sarah Polley's film, her fictions deliver so much truth. The retellings and the simulations and the theatrical aspects are what deliver all the truth.