At the Drive-In Quotes
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You're constantly guided by the last thing you made.
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Not really. I thought it was going to be but never really got around to writing about anything in particular. Just a lot of instant song composing and regular themes that I wouldn't even want to elaborate on...
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We did have choruses before, just the libraries of music in people's heads are so undeveloped that their ideas of choruses are training wheels and the Bay City Rollers.
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Dont you pretend that im not alive my bones never ache unless shes nearby where is your face in a safe of dead tongues i can see your reflection in your totem first born i suspect youve been carrying a pack of wolves i regret not killing you while i had the chance maybe i will always haunt you mark the somnolence with truth better hang your dead palace than have a living home to lose in the river ganges god damns my name dont let these hands sharpen your eyes a rasp of tails
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...kidnappings, vanishings, 'what if' scenarios about how to get Republicans out of the White House if they'd got in.
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People in my band and in my life see me as someone who is seeking out chaos, and that's why it comes to me. And these people who have never met me say because of when I was born and how the planets are aligned, chaos sees me as a portal.
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I reckon we'll play the majority of the record and then we'll probably end the set with some of the older stuff that we can include improvisation on. I think the game plan is to play all the new stuff as individual songs, unless something opens up and we recognise it as a spot to fool around with.
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You start to learn that democracies don't work when it comes to artistic expression. You learn that if you don't handle your business, someone else is going to handle it and be sneaky about it, and put an extra dollar in their pocket. You learn all sorts of things you take to your next relationship. You're constantly learning about what you don't want to do, first and foremost, which leads you to what you do want to do.
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Oh yeah, they do that right?
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I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about anything at any given moment. When you feel like you've arrived somewhere, that's the real problem.
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I was so excited that everyone would even say yes to sharing the stage. Mastodon, Diamanda [Galas], Antony [Hegarty]... I felt like a little kid, and I don't even know if we deserved it, but I've always thought ours was the most diverse so far. Hopefully Barry will let us do it again...
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I usually don't share the music with the musicians until right before they have to record their parts, because I hate discussing it and just intellectualizing it on any level. I just want to speak from the subconscious, which knows way more about me than my intellectual side will ever know. Once I start doing the arrangements - what I call the architecture of the song - that has a lot of thought put into it.
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It felt like something was calling me to Israel, and that I had to go there to discover it. I don't know how else to explain it. In my head, I was thinking it was something about music, something I needed to hear. So I booked a plane ticket and left the next day.
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Like anyone else, I go up and down. You wake up some days, and you're like, "Life is great." You wake up other days, and you're like, "This is so shitty. I just want to stay in bed." Right now, I feel confident that as long as I can keep the sound moving forward, this is something I'll be doing for at least another five years.
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Yeah, I'd definitely push for more of that.
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When people get married, it enhances their relationship and puts strains on it.
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We wanted to make the opposite of all the records we've done. All along we've threatened people that we'd make a pop record, and now we have.
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Yeah exactly, so if anyone's bummed that The Mars Volta record's too simple or too pop, they can buy that album and it'll take them right back to that kind of sound. It's one of my favourite things I've ever worked on. It's pretty much a Mars Volta record, just without Thomas, Ikey, and Marcel. With Volta [Octahedron] was just our acoustic record that turned into our pop record.
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It's like going back to an old girlfriend you're happy you got away from. You wouldn't replace the experience at all. I'm like, "I'm glad I met you. I learned so much from you. I learned how not to be. I learned how to be. But I'll be damned if I have to go through it again."