When I'm in writing mode I tend not to listen to music. I usually have a gestation period before I start writing. When I'm listening, it usually happens on the road. So, we'd been listening to a lot of music on tour the year before and all that stuff sank in.

I'm still writing songs but leaving them a lot more open and not trying to control every nuance of it.

It's just like I get this identity crisis: my body doesn't want to write, my mind doesn't want to write. Nothing about me wants to write, but I force myself to sit there and try. Nothing happens.

The writing about what you know thing was a huge one. Not worrying so much about what people think. Just writing for myself and the band is enough.

I write lyrics really fast. When it's time to write, I usually put them off until the very end and then when it's time to write I can just sit down: I sing the melody, whatever the melody is, because that's the first thing that's already been there for a long time; I start singing it and I start creating consonants and vowels; then they turn into words; then all of the sudden one sentence will happen; then that sentence will dictate how the rest of the sentences happen.

Obviously I attach myself so much to my songwriting. If I didn't attach myself to that being my sole attribute, then I would be fine with those.

If you produce yourself and you're working in a band, there's certain compromises everyone has to make, because it's a democracy and you have to cater to each other's feelings. When you have a producer, you have this objective ear that's not worrying about protecting anybody's feelings, so he's just making hard decisions based on what works and what doesn't, which was huge for us. I don't think we'd be able to make those decisions by ourselves.