I usually enter the studio with a mix of songs that I've been listening to that are relevant to the sound I want to achieve.

I'm sort of old-fashioned in the sense that I like to write something that I feel I could just perform alone, obviously, because I do that a lot in concert. So I try to make a song where there is as much that is as distinct as I can get it, just if I'm playing it or if I'm singing it. That makes me really do a lot of stuff in the guitar work when I sit and try to figure out how to indicate what sort of dynamic I'm aiming for. Where, rhythmically, I want to go. That's sort of what ties a lot of different records together, is that it's usually always based around me singing and playing a guitar.

I feel, in a way, on a record, you can be more subtle. In the live setting, everything gets amplified. The dynamics are more extreme in concert.

Sometimes you make a record that is what you want to hear. I've made a couple of those, idealized creations of what I wanted to hear. Then there are records that are what you feel.

I have this idealistic and maybe naive thought that almost any song can be anything. If you record one song today, it would maybe be exciting and cool. But I could record the same song next week and it would be something completely different.

I like to record with people. I don't particularly enjoy standing alone and recording my own voice or my own stuff. It's sometimes fun to do for demos and stuff, but I really enjoy the social act of recording records, because writing it is so lonely. And it has to be.

When I write, I'm sort of old-fashioned in the sense that I like to write something that I feel I could just perform alone, obviously, because I do that a lot in concert.