I think people do expect something a little weird to happen. Maybe they've seen something I did once on the Internet and expect that I'm gonna do that every night.

I really love a lot of Japanese music, like Ryuichi Sakamoto and this guy I got really into, Tatsuro Yamashita. When I was a little younger, I thought synthesizers meant Kraftwerk, cold, robotic, weird, Autobahn. But these guys are having a lot of fun on these things. Sometimes. Sometimes it's very somber. They could go either way.

Over a year before I started recording Salad Days, so I finally sat down and was like I have to do this. And it did feel like a chore. I was looking at it in a completely wrong way, trying to one up myself. Just the typical sophomore album bullshit. The main thing I got out of it is I eventually gave up on all that stuff. I had to re-learn why I liked making music in the first place, why I liked recording in my room all the time. Because it's fun. It's fun for me.

I mean it was weird. But Phoenix watched us every night. But it's like they're not even a band, they're like a corporation. They bring a staff of like 40 people.

My music is kind of laid back, it doesn't have super crispy, shiny production, and I'm not singing my heart out or whatever. But that whole idea of blogs declaring: "this is the new denomination for this sound" is ridiculous to me.

I mean, Lady Gaga is trying to be a freak or whatever but that quality of being very meaningly and heartfelt, but also having a sense of humor about it, bands don't do that anymore. Lady Gaga's songs are cheesy. The Beatles weren't cheesy. That's the hardest thing with music: to not be cheesy, but also be meaningful. That's the goal, I think.

I lived in Brooklyn for a year and I moved out to Rockaway Beach. I've been living here for two years now. I put my address on the album, so I have a lot of visitors all the time.