The National Quotes
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I do a lot of editing and switching around and putting little pieces together to get the right mood and personality, and it takes me forever to get a song finished.
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A lot of the lyrics I write involve images that just swing the song in a way that feels really good to me and there isn't a literal explanation. They're not riddles for the listener to solve.
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When I'm writing for certain instruments, you want to write within what you know about that instrument but also challenge the player. Something like 'Aheym' is very virtuosic - but because I have a history of performing music, I don't like unplayable music.
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To me, a song like 'Demons' or the title 'Trouble Will Find Me' are acknowledgments that you can't really plan for life, and you can't plan for trouble.
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The lyrics are what I work on the hardest, but I'm not trying to make a perfectly clear message or anything like that. In fact, I'm usually trying to avoid saying something too directly, because usually that rings false anyway.
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If you make rock music with guitars in it, the Radiohead comparison is inevitable.
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Early on, I was a performer playing classical music. It's in my DNA in a way that I can't begin to extract it.
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David Harrington asked me to write a piece for Kronos Quartet for a performance in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. I live just two blocks from the park and spend many mornings running around it. The park for me symbolizes much of what I love about New York, especially the stunning diversity of Brooklyn with its myriad cultures and communities.
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Art is a way of life.
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We've played in places where there were more of us onstage than in the audience.
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I don't play an instrument. I pretend. I try to.
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The danger of a rock band is repeating oneself. It's our greatest fear - that it evolves into the myopia of a semi-successful band that's in love with its own shadow.
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Getting on stage and performing and standing under lights is such an unsettling experience - in a good and bad way - but it's the only place I can go to feel comfortable.
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At first, when 'Boxer' came out, people were a little let down, and we worried that it might be the end for us. But then it began to grow on people. 'Boxer' bought us our creative freedom.
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A person with grace is somebody who's socially graceful or is a classy person, but sometimes you just feel the opposite of that, and you just feel like a jerk and a loser and a weirdo.
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I love the physicality of instruments, and instruments as objects, like dancers are bodies.
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I'm a stubborn guy that loses his temper, sometimes driving the station wagon in the wrong direction for hours and hours and never admitting that he's gone the wrong way.
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I don't love being on the road.
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David Harrington, who's the violinist and founder of Kronos, is a super open-minded and adventurous guy.
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The Planned Parenthood 7" project is an example of us putting our noses to the grindstone on and trying to make a little difference. Working on that was my way of handling my own emotions about Donald Trump. I was talking about politics for so long, I just kind of ran out of juice on that.
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In terms of the music, it feels almost like trouble's a good thing - you never know when a song is going to surprise you. We look for these subversive moments in songs.
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There is a kind of adventure- and risk-seeking audience in classical contemporary music that is really empowering and part of what draws me to it. The people that come to these concerts are open-minded and curious.
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You don't come to our shows if you want to look cool.
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Inviting artists to do something, you want it to be a place where they're going to feel challenged and excited and that will maybe open up some new doorway in their own lives or their own creative practice.