I know some people that have gone through serious struggles. People that were close to me, and I've seen some terrible things about people who lose it. So I think that type of pain is something that's human and that, actually, can help us look at ourselves a little bit.
When I was a little bit younger The strain I was under could make me cry. Now I'm a little bit older, A little bit bolder, Never so shy
Some people I've talked to have had really an interpretation of this record as being nostalgic. But in some ways, when we were writing Stay Positive, I was really obsessed with age. I kept saying it was a record about trying to age gracefully. This record, I think actually was us aging gracefully.
I think maybe we were just a little bit overdone. It was saturated. People may have gotten tired of us. We were everywhere, all the time.
I think rock should always stay a little bit outside the pale; I think it should remain a little bit dangerous - a little bit ornery, as the Americans say.
I think all of us who kind of live within the sport recognize that Davis Cup certainly could be a little more visible if perhaps there were some adjustments made to it, and it was made a little bit more easy to understand for the fans, if there's a little bit more of a start and finish line.
On every Bright Eyes record, there's some kind of sound collage that begins it. Some of them have dialogue, some don't. I like it because it can kind of slow down the attention span a bit. It's a way to draw you in to the rest of the record.
And little he knew of the things that ink may do, how it can mark a dead man's thought for the wonder of later years, and tell of happening that are gone clean away, and be a voice for us out of the dark of time, and save many a fragile thing from the pounding of heavy ages; or carry to us, over the rolling centuries, even a song from lips long dead on forgotten hills.
I've actually done a really good job listening to my body, relaxing. Some days you train hard, some days you rest a little bit.
Too frequently we think we have to do spectacular things. Yet if we remember that the sea is actually made up of drops of water and each drop counts, each one of us can do our little bit where we are. Those little bits can come together and almost overwhelm the world. Each one of us can be an oasis of peace.
So actually what that was able to do was twofold. For me, it helps illustrate what DTS is capable of doing right from the beginning. And secondly, technically, it actually gave us a little bit more time so we could just finesse some effects and things like that, because when you release theatrical, you actually get a bigger window than if you're DVD when you have to have it done sooner so they can press the DVDs and all that kind of stuff.
We all are born with a certain package. We are who we are: where we were born, who we were born as, how we were raised. We're kind of stuck inside that person, and the purpose of civilization and growth is to be able to reach out and empathize a little bit with other people. And for me, the movies are like a machine that generates empathy. It lets you understand a little bit more about different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us.
I wasn’t going anywhere and neither was the rest of the world. We were all just hanging around waiting to die and meanwhile doing little things to fill the space. Some of use weren’t even doing little things. We were vegetables.
I think it's stripped down as far as electronics go, but we just wanted to write a record that we felt better represented how we sound live with more of a rock feel, which is the direction we've been heading. It's just an evolution of the band throughout the years. We worked on this record longer than any other record, so I don't know if "stripped down" is how I would put it; I think it is a little bit more raw sounding.
The people with the strong, brave exteriors are just as weak and vulnerable as the rest of us. And of course they never admit to their childish practices, their moments of weakness or absurdity, and then the rest of us think that's how it should be.
That's just a symbol of how you should deal with a breakup. You can cry for a little bit, eat some ice cream, but I think, after that, it's like, get up, listen to some powerful music and do something that makes you happy, be productive.