I became very aware of what I was used to relying on, almost tricks. It's funny because I could feel myself creating a formula and sticking with it and I just told myself, 'That's not me, that's not really how I am, god forbid I have developed a formula - it's music; songwriting.' It's heretic, honestly, in the church of music, so I had to unwind a few tricks in order to get past it.

I'm sure that's every adolescent's complaint about their home town. When a city is unstimulating, you get pretty isolated.

The more I know, the more I realise I don't know. And the more I realise I'll never truly understand.

Lyrics are what I tend to tear hair out over and they're where I tend to feel weak musically, if I'm being very honest. It is not something I feel like I know anything about; I would not consider myself a writer. I just want to sing, I just want to sing a melody, I just want to feel a melody, and be part of the song, and everything else is not so important.

There was always a unique Beirut sound, it was always there, and so this time I just dove straight into that, instead of daydreaming and wandering.

I do feel like my music, in some weird way, is probably better suited for cinema than for anything else - I can't really explain, other than I think that music has been mostly inspired often by soundtracks.

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.