I didn't realize how different our band's senses of melody actually were. I would write a part that just made perfect sense to me, but for them, it was mind-boggling. Likewise, they could play stuff with relative ease that I never could have. If there was something lost in translation melodically, it wouldn't work at all - we'd just be 17 people in a giant room staring awkwardly at each other. When that happened, I'd go home, figure out what was wrong, fix it, and then return to smooth sailing.

In the age of the mp3, you gotta make the package special, something that's worth owning.

It's funny because you do often read in recounts of very famous albums, people tend to focus on mistakes in really positive ways, and there's certain mistakes of my own that I always do find on every record that I needed to accept. I find it really interesting to talk about. I always write songs at the wrong tempos, and I have to learn to accept that a little bit.

It's just not an image I had ever put out about myself - the bedroom synth guy. The whole thing seemed ridiculous.

Raucous drunken trumpets and instrumentation tend to guide the way you think. They can give you a path to follow lyrically.

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

As much as I try to grow as a lyricist, I tend to laugh at even calling myself that, because I think that my actual talents lie more in arrangements than they do words.