I'm a visual artist myself and always have been so it's very natural for me to be very concerned with presentation, whether it's artwork or onstage.

I come from an art-school background, and I still feel that in my music, it's about exploration and challenging myself, about putting myself in a place that's frightening because I haven't been there before.

I've always felt profoundly about what's going on in the world on a daily basis. What I hadn't felt was that I was at a point in my writing career where I could write about these things in songs and do it well.

I was working with D'Mile - he's amazing! And I don't know, it was like that guitar riff was so crazy to me, and so I think I was frustrated about something that happened earlier and I feel like I'm just a good guy, I don't cut people off, I don't really call people out when they do stuff that they should be called out on, and I'm just always the one being the bigger person. So, that day "Gangster" just came out. That's just how I feel in that day to day life.

People like Howlin' Wolf, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, John Lee Hooker, Nina Simone, Captain Beefheart - all of these artists were what I grew up listening to every day of my life. And there's a very healthy music scene in the west country of England, where I grew up.

I knew what I didn't want to do- that's always my starting point. The starting point is always that I don't want to repeat myself. Or I try my best not to, with varying degrees of success.

I feel like it's very important that I'm doing what I'm doing, and I want to keep honoring that and try and do it as honestly as I can.