I don't listen to a ton of music other than putting my show together, just because my lifestyle isn't too conducive to listening to music all the time. I like to watch basketball, and I would rather not listen to music while I'm doing that.
There are lot of bands that have too many songs, I think.
Sometimes songs need extra time and space to really play themselves out, and some songs it's like, this is all you need, a straightforward thing.
My whole view of music completely flipped over on its head. I grew up listening to punk rock, SST. I liked people that were making music that weren't necessarily very good at their instruments, it was more about the ideas they had than how well they could play and sing.
People who were really good at playing or singing seemed boring to me.
A lot of overdubs from the last couple of records had to do with me being insecure about the way my voice sounds or the way I play guitar. I would want to mask it with extra things, or keep every moment super exciting. With the newest record, I tried my best to back off, and if something wasn't interesting at every moment, or if my voice didn't sound that good, just let it go and accept it.
To me, Modest Mouse is one of the best bands ever. I actually wasn't surprised that they made it big. It's always weird to see it happen, and it happens so fast, all of a sudden songs are in the background on TV.
It's really hard for me to capture this certain way of singing that sounds good to me. I don't really understand it, but hopefully some day I'll figure it out.
That's one of those hazards of an interview: You get tired of your stock answer and you try to get creative and even play devil's advocate.
When I was growing up, I really liked punk rock. I liked the sort of people that played really powerful music that was pretty unassuming otherwise - people who didn't dress weird or do much theatrics.
I could never settle down into a reggae band, that's too bizarre.
If you know that someone is going to hear what you're doing, you're always going to be self-conscious about it. In a way that's good; it spurs you on.
If people like electronic music, then great - let that be the next thing. I don't think I ever really will, but there's plenty of records for me to go buy.
There are certain recordings where my voice sounds good to me. Singing live I really enjoy, but I don't know how good it sounds.
For me, I'm more of a songwriter than a guitar player or singer. And not having things to work on was really kind of nice.
