Obviously it always takes longer to finish an album than you think it will. That's always going to be the case. Everything takes longer than you think it will. Occasionally things happen fast.

I think summer, at least as I've experienced it, can be joyous but it can also be tough emotionally. Physically, it can be hot to the point of being unbearable and I think you want to capture that frustration, but also the release.

At some point I decided I didn't want to learn any more guitar technique. I was at that level where the next mountain there was to climb was Van Halen and I didn't really like Van Halen.

Throughout college I was getting better and better at making recordings, producing songs, making different kinds of beats. I was starting to learn the signifiers of production from the '60s, the '80s. We never re-recorded anything. All the record companies that wanted to sign us - except for one - were excited about the recordings that we had done ourselves.

It took me some time to join the various streams of making music that was technically good and making music that made me feel good.

I did take guitar lessons as a teenager, though, and I started to teach myself how to play everything I could play on the guitar on piano, so I had a really weird, non-traditional route to proficiency. I think it probably helped me come at things from a new angle.

I took one piano lesson and hated it and then didn't take any piano lessons until I was 18.