It may be a product of me being raised in episcopal church, but I have a love for ritual and theater and the significance of doing the exact same thing over and over. So I really love knowing every little thing I'm going to do during a show.

I get more excited about like, "How nice is the piano?" or "How does the room sound?" I don't really see the gear so much anymore.

When you make a record, you probably are not going to hit exactly what you were aiming for. You also have to let go at a certain point, and just trust it. I remember feeling we had fallen short, or that it had fallen short. At the same time it was great to see a good critical reaction to it, and to hear people were enjoying it, which made me think, "Well, maybe it's a good thing I didn't get exactly what I wanted." Now we're testing that theory.

I like having some things very clear while other things are obscured... so that it kind of keeps coming into and out of focus.

It's not like I'm narrating stories with music behind them. It's all kind of one thing. You hope you can provoke a specific emotional reaction, but in ways that aren't quite plain.

The nice thing about being a band that nobody knows about is that you can do whatever you want.

When I was writing some of songs for the record in Galapagos it was the feeling of being there I wanted to evoke more than anything. I remember hearing all the parts of the songs in my mind when I was walking around over the lava fields.