You can't please everybody all the time, but I think for the most part we tend to maintain a healthy level of self-reference to kind of make sure we continue to push things forward.
We never sit down before we start making a record and talk about this new sonic palette that we are going to try to explore. We always let the record kind of reveal itself to us over time.
For 'Narrow Stairs', the majority of the songs I brought in were guitar songs - songs we could sit in a room and just play. I can honestly say I had more fun and felt more inspired on this record than anything that we had done in a long time.
I like writing on piano and a computer, and a lot of 'Plans' came out of samples and vocal lines.
Living this life in the same sorta way that Kerouac lived, you get to hang out at shows and drink and you're able to not really face reality and adulthood the way most of my friends are.
I love bummer songs.
The second 'Postal Service' album is threatening to become the 'Chinese Democracy' of indie rock. It will come out eventually, or maybe it won't.
I just rediscovered my guitar.
I've covered Avril Lavigne. I like good pop songs, and I don't think there should be any kind of preconceptions about where good pop songs come from.
I feel that we are currently living in a world that is similar to late '50s, early '60s kind of world.
I was literally just going and applying for jobs, and I couldn't get a job, and I was getting more and more broke, and you find yourself groveling for jobs you don't even want.
The songwriting of Hall & Oates is deceptively complex. There are a number of key changes that pass you by as you're listening to the song because they're so seamless and clever.
Hall & Oates is one of the few musical groups as satisfying now as it was back then. There's something incredibly musically satisfying about their songs. Nothing has diminished my love for them.
What we aspired to in 1998, we have wildly surpassed. And I know we all feel incredibly grateful and lucky this band has been able to have the life that it's had.
We all pine for a time in life when things were simpler. Even when they weren't necessarily simpler, hindsight makes them look a lot simpler. The reality of it was that it wasn't.
When you connect as many memories to your geography as I have, and then you see that geography change around you, you're forced to reckon with the passage of time.
I know that the Seattle my parents knew is not the Seattle I know and that these things exist in a state of constant flux and change. The hope is that at least some of that change can be for the better.
I read 'On The Road' in college. I was 18 or 19, and I had a particular quarter where I was taking biology, calculus, and physics. Those were my three classes. It wasn't a well-rounded schedule at all. It was hard, hard work, all the time - hours and hours and hours of homework.
We tend to think of our idols as kind of superheroes; maybe less so today, given that people have a tendency to overshare on social media, but when I was growing up, all you knew about these people was what they allowed you to see - which was them doing superhuman things, up on stage in an arena with all these people going crazy.
When I'm old, I'd like to wake up in the morning and not really do anything - just be happy to exist. I'd like to look at my accomplishments and sit back and revel in my own achievement.
