In some ways, I feel like I've been such a dilettante for so many years, just picking up instruments and stretching myself so thin.

I could probably spend the next five years reworking an album from ten years ago, if given the chance, to make it better - make it best, so to speak.

I was always looking outside of myself for stories and ideas and influences and then I kind of realized in 2010, that all of this time, I've developed a "sound." And I've never fully explored it.

I can't work in Brooklyn. Unless I'm completely locked away in a studio, there's just too much distraction and stimulation.

I'm writing songs about New York. A lot of them carry the names of neighborhoods in Long Island. Maspeth, Montauk. I'm getting into the idea of a F. Scott Fitzgerald-esque Long Island back when New York was...New York.

I felt like I needed to get a few side projects out of my system before I settled in to do the new record. Usually what's asked of you, everything's a year cycle. When you get caught up in that cycle, it can be kind of brutal, actually. It was good I got to take a year off, with no pressure coming from anywhere.

I think that sonically, music speaks volumes more than words do, and I have always thought that and will continue to think that for the rest of my life.