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.

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.

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 seems like journalism over here in UK, in general, is at a higher level: not overrun by all these teeny little blogs. There's more of a historical context for it or something. It seems like people review something or take a listen to something and they really do their homework. That's just what it seems like.

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.

I wasn't being critical of myself in the way I can normally be, and I was letting myself follow through with stuff. It was like a prolonged spontaneity.