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.

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.

Speaking for myself I have influenced with lots of John Coltrane, Van Morrison, Joanna Newsom, Mississippi Records compilations, Simon & Garfunkel, Duncan Browne, Judee Sill, Sublime Frequencies releases, Ali Farka Touré, John Fahey, Flower Travellin' Band, Sagittarius, Toumani Diabaté, Philip Glass, lots of different stuff.

I do read the records reviews but more out of curiosity than anything else, I feel like we know what we want to do next time regardless of how this one is received, good or bad, so it won't really make much of a difference, which wasn't the case on the first album, where both the positive and negative criticism or reactions did catch us off guard and inevitably colored the creation of this one.

You want to make music that reflects your ideals, but considering the isolating process of recording and the time and energy requirements of touring, there aren't a lot of opportunities to express those ideals anywhere but the music itself.

We're covering all our bases so we can do whatever we want next time. That's how we're looking at it, rather than this just being an endless number of album/tour cycles.