When I read War and Peace in Norway, really far away from humanity for a long time, it was such an amazing, affirming blast of "humanity" in all forms. It totally cracked my mind-nut open and rainbows shot out. I loved humanity and being alive, rather than wanting to bury my head in the snow.

It's nice to have a band that can adapt to whatever show we're in, so we can play on a big stage or a house show.

If my music is political in a way, and it might be, it's in the way of generating a sensitivity in people, a deeper awareness of the world around them. That's my goal, at least.

I didn't want to do a double album. I just felt like the last two records I made were like that, and a lot of records I was buying were like that, and it started to feel like it was too much music to digest at once.

When someone close to you dies, the line is shifted really drastically about what is meaningful and what isn't.

Nirvana really touched me as a teenager and started making me pay attention to music as a participatory thing that I could do. Music that you want to throw your body into it - that's a feeling that I'm not quite satisfied with having made yet.

People's attentions spans are getting shorter and shorter. I don't want to cater to that necessarily but, just for myself, it feels like more than 40 minutes of music is too much.