Some of your lyrics are becoming more politically direct. Is that part of the experimentation? Or is this just an evolution of your style?

I’ve had a couple of lyrics that mention some politics or even causes. I don’t think there’s any evolution. I hate to say it, but I’ve felt like politics is kind of a mindsuck. Obviously vote, don’t get me wrong. Have conversations. But to get obsessed with it, to get into it, it drags you into this world that is painful, and a lot of times this mental energy is used for what? I’m talking more specifically about political races, and not causes like feminism or social justice in all its forms. I’m talking specifically Democrats and Republicans. Because of Trump, a lot more people are thinking about the specific race, like get rid of this guy, instead of the issues. Some of my songs have mentioned that, I don’t really have much to say about that. I do think of music primarily as – I don’t want to say – beyond encompassing politics, but more of an unconscious, you know, human and generally life-affirming thing which I sometimes don’t find in politics.

Does this album want to push you into different directions, or was this just a one-off experiment?

Well, I don’t know. As far as what pushed me in this specific record, I’ve been wanting to engage with different starting points for writing songs for a while. Whether it’s guitar or keyboards, it doesn’t really matter. It's how you start it or not. I like a band in a room and making rock albums. I would like to do that again. There’s always baby steps in every record that I’ve done that I try to make it different: working with different engineers, different places and some different instruments and different tempos. That being said, it all blends into the same thing. What are you going to do?

What are you going to do?

I don’t know. When I think of really epic artists, like Radiohead, they do all this different stuff but when you look at the mass it just sounds like Radiohead. Maybe their first album sounds a bit grunge that doesn’t really sound like them, but the rest I just hear it. Variation on a theme, kind of, in a good way.

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