When I listen to Airplanes record, it takes me back. I remember a lot of my thought processes when I was 20 or 21, writing those songs and recording that record.
BEN GIBBARDWhen I listen to Airplanes record, it takes me back. I remember a lot of my thought processes when I was 20 or 21, writing those songs and recording that record.
BEN GIBBARDI feel that we are currently living in a world that is similar to late ’50s, early ’60s kind of world.
BEN GIBBARDI just rediscovered my guitar.
BEN GIBBARDI 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.
BEN GIBBARDHall & 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.
BEN GIBBARDAt this point in my life, I find myself obsessed with alternate paths I could’ve taken. I don’t think about this with a sense of regret, but with a sense of wonder.
BEN GIBBARDThe Photo Album is the weakest record. For the first time in our careers, we found ourselves with an economic incentive to be on the road and to be making albums.
BEN GIBBARDI feel like on those older records there are a lot of attempts at clever turns of phrase.
BEN GIBBARDI have always been very open and earnest about some things in my life, some things that are not directly in my life, but they’re twirling around me at the time.
BEN GIBBARDI feel like there’s a lot of beauty in the darkness of ‘Narrow Stairs,’ but that’s not really a place I’m ready to go to for a while. I’m interested in taking a different approach and having the next record be different in tone – I’m just not interested in making another dark, dark album.
BEN GIBBARDThe 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.
BEN GIBBARDWe would scoff at the idea of a nice studio. “Why would you want to go to a nice studio? Oh wow, they have really expensive gear. Ooh, that’s really fancy. Well we’ve got an eight-track. We’ve got it going on here.”
BEN GIBBARDLiking interesting things doesn’t make you interesting.
BEN GIBBARDWe 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.
BEN GIBBARDI’m a war of head versus heart, it’s always this way. My head is weak, my heart always speaks, before I know what it will say.
BEN GIBBARDNada Surf and Harvey Danger are good bands. I think they’ve just stayed true to why they play music in the first place, it’s just because they love doing it and they love each other and that’s the impetus for doing it, not trying to keep singles on the radio and on MTV.
BEN GIBBARD