Everything alive must die. Every building built to the sky will fall. Don't try to tell me my everlasting love is a lie.

We live in a connected world now. Some find that frightening. If people are downloading our music, they're listening to it. The internet is like radio for us.

I have always thought it was important to maintain some connection for myself to what it takes to make a song work by myself, to put a song across to an audience by myself.

It's hard for people to see how they can change how dismal things look, but there are still wonderful things to sing about. Music is the only way we are capable of talking about the most important things.

I think there's a curiosity that can make you feel anxious as to what the world's going to make of what you're doing. It's not necessarily what you're going to get back in terms of record reviews or how people talk about your record, it's getting on the road and playing the new songs live.

I spent a fair amount of time editing the lyrics and allowing the song to kind of evolve. ... anytime there's anything worthwhile, it certainly 'feels' like it happened on the spur of the moment, but it's a composite of lots of spurs of the moment, hopefully. And over time, you catch up with those, and then you have a full set of lyrics you've thought of and you feel comfortable singing.

When you listen to most of the records that really had an impact on you, they always seem to be from a different era.