The new solo album sounds like me: I'm singing about bad business transactions, bodily fluids, and courage.

I didn't retire, I became irrelevant - there is a big difference.

We do have to remain true to the idea of honesty within what you want to do.

I wanted to make a very cohesive-sounding album. Anyone who has listened to me and brought me into their living rooms and their bedrooms - I am making this for them.

What inspires me is anxiety and the quest to try to change things in my life. ...I got addicted to endings and beginnings and to the idea of always moving around. ...Obviously, whenever you're going through something that's the best time to create, if you're going through something amazing, or horrible, or nothing at all you should be creating. Unfortunately the songwriters of today generally torture themselves to make sure they're writing good songs and take it a little too seriously.

I got a little lost in "Law & Order" and "Luther" and all those shows where it's basically women dying all the time, I had to stop watching that stuff because it fills me with anxiety. And I joined a gym.

There was this wonderful day where we sat and listened to all of Andy's [Kim] songs throughout the years, and I think we spent around six hours at my house, and then we played all these tunes of mine that have never found any version. And "Heaven Without a Gun" is one of them, and it struck him. If you can find a compadre who doesn't live in the literal world 'cos you're not always fighting to explain yourself to make sense, that maybe it's the dyslexia, maybe it's the dreamer, maybe it's the idea that grammar was not your foreplay - excuse me - see what I mean, your forte.