Being in Portland is cool. I have some good friends here and the general feeling might be a little more welcoming.

You want to think about certain styles of music as being reflective of a certain culture or a certain time or a point of view. You don't want it to be just an intellectual exercise.

I only write maybe one or two songs every couple of years that I think are good enough to play alone without other stuff happening.

At the end of the day, for people in this position, you just need to make something that feels like you're expressing yourself honestly, something that you'd want to listen to. The rest of the aesthetic is kind of bullshit, and I don't mean that in a negative way - just that it's a choice.

We definitely classify things in order to get closer to what we believe in - so it serves a purpose to really think about one style of music, and to understand the shades of delineation between similar artists. But yeah, it's really nice to listen to something the way most people listen to music! Just to enjoy it, without having to put it in context.

We're going out to play all the places where people might want to see us, because next time we might not just think about hitting every market or how we can make the most money.

The lyrics to me are a result of the emotional and creative climate present while making the record as well as personally going through a sort of mid-twenties stock-taking.