But the sound I’m sure stays with you, the same video game.. chorus? The repetition?

Yeah, what I always think about is, especially in older video games where you don’t have that much, it’s pretty basic sounding. To be able to get away with making a loop that’s 30 seconds, that keeps going and going and going and doesn’t make the person playing the game wanna blow their brains out, then you’ve figured it out. The Tetris theme song; I mean it’s annoying but it’s not that annoying. You know?

Yeah, and especially with Here Comes The Cowboy when you’ve described it, you’re like “It’s really repetitive” - but I don’t think it does the thing where it drives you crazy or makes you wanna blow your brains out. It’s really soothing.

It could be. I mean “Here Comes The Cowboy” people are like, “What...thefuck is that?” Which was part of what wanted to do too. I like it. I don’t know what I like about it, but I like it. You know what’s funny, I’ve heard some people say, “‘Here Comes The Cowboy’ it’s just too long,” which to me is so funny ‘cause I wanted to make that song even longer. It was maybe three times as long when I went to go get it mastered, but it wouldn’t fit on a vinyl.

Here Comes the Cowboy, is not a cowboy album from what you’ve talked about. You’re not a cowboy, it’s not a cowboy album. So how come you chose that symbol?

It’s kind of an exotic cartoon character, and I grew up in that part of Canada where maybe there are cowboys or some modern reiteration of it, for those who work on farms. But the classical archetypal American cartoon cowboy doesn’t exist anymore. I feel like the record is almost an interpretation of what that is supposed to be by someone who really has no idea what they are talking about - it’s almost exotic.

Yea, for sure. You’ve said with this album, you really struggled and grappled with trying to perfect something that was supposed to be imperfect, you know like ‘perfectly shitty’ and how do you know when a song is finished, or does it ever feel finished?

That’s the funny thing with this record: most of the writing for it, I would just sit down and do something on this thing, and something over here, and a little drum, and sing a little bit, and usually I mean, the song feels finished the first time I put it down. It’s like there’s the idea, — some of the things I change a little bit. But the initial sketch of it is always the most organic feeling to me. There’s a difference in my mind between the song being finished, and the recording being finished, and the recording part was what drove me. I would fall in love with the initial the way it sounds. It’s kind of weird, I just popped it up and here you go, and then to try and be like, “Well now I have to make it sound a little fancier so like people will… you know… so it like doesn’t sound like shit.” And then there’s that teeter totter of, “But I want it to have the garbage aspect that it had when it was born.”

What is your creative process like, and how it has changed throughout your career. How do you write, how do you make your songs?

I do a little bit more now that I’m on tour now, just because we have the facilities to do it in a way, like we’re not traveling in a compact car, sleeping on people’s floors anymore. There’s hotels and buses or whatever, so there’s a place that I could do it if I wanted to do it. But other than that it’s pretty much the same. I have my little studios in this garage here and it’s either there or in a bedroom somewhere else and it’s still very quick. If something is taking me more than an hour or two then I’ll kind of lose interest in it. But yeah, the main thing I think is it used to be, I’m gonna write some chords and then I’ll figure out lyrics afterwards. But now I’d like before I go into recording something, to have at least one instrument and some kind of narrative to it, a lyrical idea so it feels like there’s more of a foundation, but I think and probably a lot of people do it that way. But for me it was always the inverse.