Lyrics are back, maybe. It seems like there was a bit of an attitude that lyrics are not important.

That's why you go to a nice studio. You can get a magic take. You don't really have to do anything to it.

What producers did was mostly recording in the studio, so it never changed our sound just that much.

I hated it so much as a child. I just didn't like it when punk bands went metal, it really bothered me. It was happening left and right in the 1980s. It started I think with D.C. bands - G.I., Soul Side, they went metal. Right at that time, R.E.M. was coming out, these more kinda feminine bands, and I was more drawn to that than to go metal. And you remember MTV, with the bad metal. But even Metallica, it just wasn't my direction.

I've been getting plenty off my chest. Sometimes I get too much off my chest and I regret it.

The word "down," is very musical. It just always comes.

With lyrics for me, it's usually musically-based. It's not really poetry- or writer-based. It's rock-based. It doesn't mean that I'm aping rock lyrics, but I'm writing from a music standpoint. I'm thinking more of music heroes, if they're in my mind. Not William Blake or John Ashbury. Sometimes maybe I thought of him a little bit. Or Wallace Stevens. I don't even really fully understand either of them.