I’ve always done a lot of research and stuff around the songs that I write so there are pages and pages of writing and you can kind of see these songs emerging.
I write songs in batches and then record them and then can’t write again for ages. I try and build one song upon another, they may not obviously look inter-related but often one song acts as a springboard into another.
The band is a living, breathing thing. It grows in the same way we do as human beings and if it doesn’t, it dies. It’s important to feed the organism, and one way of doing that is to set musical challenges that keep it alive.
I am not interested in anything that doesn’t have a genuine heart to it. You’ve got to have soul in the hole. If that isn’t there, I don’t see the point.
I’m very happy to hear that my work inspires writers and painters. It’s the most beautiful compliment, the greatest reward. Art should always be an exchange.
Inspiration is a word used by people who aren’t really doing anything. I go into my office every day that I’m in Brighton and work. Whether I feel like it or not is irrelevant.
When I’m singing “Deanna,” for example, which I sing pretty much every night, it brings forward a kind of imagined, romanticized lie about this particular person, which I find really comforting and exciting to sing about.
The way I go about writing records is that I make a calendar date to start the new record, so I have nothing. I don’t have a bunch of notes that I bring into the office, I start with nothing at all.
