It's sort of a fine line where you're dying to express it and then hoping no one really gets it that closely. But I'm pretty much over that. I'd really just like to be understood.

I think, then, there's the sort of, like, political dimension to lyrics. One of the problems that I've had with my output as a lyric writer is that I look back at it and there's some turn-of-phrases and some images and some kind of montage-y kinds of things I'm really proud of. But it kind of bums me out that people have told me again and again that they don't really understand what I'm trying to say.

One thing I know that's really cool - it seems to me that Blake Schwarzenbach [Jets to Brazil frontman; ex-Jawbreaker] is someone who's made music that's people continue to take really personally.

Stage presence is not something I spend a whole lot of time thinking about. On the one hand, I do, because I have, like, favorite front-people and I know what's excited me to see in a band. But I can't be David Yow [Jesus Lizard frontman] and still play guitar.

It's sort of a fine line where you're dying to express it and then hoping no one really gets it that closely. But I'm pretty much over that. I'd really just like to be understood.

The fact of picking up an instrument and writing a song and expressing yourself publicly has a powerful political dimension.

To say someone is a producer... it's kind of a slippery term.