There's always this talk of the industry of music and about selling records and whatever, but that ignores probably the majority of music that isn't about trying to sell itself, that isn't about being connected to any industry. There's a huge amount of music where someone just happened to have a tape recorder and turned it on or hit the red button while they were in the back of church or recording something in their front room.

I don't know if embarrassed is the right word, about pop, but I prefer the abstract and the distorted in music. And I keep writing these proper melodies and harmonies, and they're the bits that get thrown out of the records! And I have quite a collection.

I think it's essential to make new music now, and to try and make epic records now, and not rely on what happened in the past.

I kept saying I got sick of listening to people's productions, like people who had no ideas, no songs, nothing to say but could still con people's ears into thinking those songs were there by the application of production. I kind of wanted my record a little more honest than that: "Well, this is us. We put a microphone on it. Here it is."

My songs get to a stage where they resist any further change, you know? And that's kind of where they are, short of re-recording or starting again. That's kind of where it's gonna be.

It's a weird situation, doing interviews. Nowhere else in the world can you talk about yourself and have people listen like they're interested over and over. Most people, if they talked about themselves for a half an hour, you'd go, "I'll give them a miss next time." So it's kind of weird.

Everybody's looking for some kind of authenticity in music. Or some kind of truism, you know, "This is true!" And the thing about gospel music is, these people are singing about their faith. So it always comes across with, as authentic, you know? Gospel choirs put across this amazing sound but they're singing from the heart because they truly believe it. And I kind of have that faith, but I just have that faith in music.