I didn't come in and say: "I'm a singer." I came into the band as a second guitar player and a vocalist, but not the songwriter. I had been writing poetry for years, so I sort of had the nature of the words. I felt like no one else could sing my lyrics, so I took a crack at it.

It's not like changing one word with my lyrics is going to make them more intelligible or relatable. I was always very misunderstood and taken as very pretentious and serious all the time. I would think, "Do you not see there's a lot of tongue-in-cheek and humor here?"

I don't really get a lot of clarity in my everyday life and my interactions with people. Most things that happen to me aren't very straightforward. They're either vastly confusing, or I realize that I'm inventing whatever meaning I'm deriving from whatever happens and it's filtering through my own indulgent perspective.

I got the chess bug when I was finishing high school, we were doing chess tournaments at my house. I never got to a very high level.

Jeffrey Lewis sings as though absurdity were truth, and truth absurdity. And I think I agree with him.

If you're an artist, you do what you do, and in a way, you don't even control the core essence of what you do. You try to mold it and develop a style, but the core elements of what you do are just part of who you are.

In an artistic and spiritual sense I'm really not that concerned about what happens after the album is done.