I feel like every great record is like a world in itself.

Three years between records is longer than average. Double albums are much more of a statement. I really wanted to put myself out there as much as I possibly could.

I feel like every great record is like a world in itself.

The music starts as being way separate from the lyrics, and I write - I have notebooks that I fill with drawings and just words, and stuff that I've written.

There's all these people involved, and it becomes this huge machine - it stops being just me making my own little songs for myself, or for the world. And it's hard to stop the machine. If you want to take time to write a record, they're like, "OK, tour through March, April, and June, then you can take a few weeks off to record in July before getting back on the road for the European festival circuit." After a while, I had to put my foot down.

I had these glorified ideas about San Francisco and its drug culture - I thought inspiration would just hit me and I would get these San Francisco drugs in my system and all of a sudden an amazing record would come out. But that's not really what happened at all.

I think that when people download the record they're kind of missing out on part of the experience, because it's really meant to be an immersive experience.