There is a beauty to touring - to be honest, there's a way that music connects and you really feel the actual reaction of people to the music that you're making, and I feel like if I didn't do that I just wouldn't know, and I don't think my music would be the same.

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 tend to hear rhythm and melody, chord-progressions, long before I hear words.

My thought with harmonies and melodies in general, is that if it doesn't come right away then it's never going to come at all.

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

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

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