The National Quotes
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If you learn classical guitar, you play Bach, and then John Dowland. He's the greatest. He's interesting for many, many reasons.
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Usually, writing lyrics for me is like bleeding drop by drop from the forehead.
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Everybody knows we're big liberals and I was a very outspoken Hillary Clinton supporter, and I still am. It's impossible for us to separate the songs we're writing from what's going on in the world.
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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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I grew up going to see my sister dance, both at the ballet and later as a modern dancer, and have always been a big fan of the ballet. So I have had a long relationship with dance.
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I'm not trying to take over the world, but I find it really rewarding to write, and I thrive on learning.
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Part of what I enjoy about writing classical music is communicating through the score and collaborating with such amazing musicians.
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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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As much as you try to organize your life, life will surprise you.
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Playing pentatonic scales over orchestral music is not something I want to do or listen to.
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It's not a hard sell to be asked to do something in Ireland.
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Typically, people think, 'Oh the hippies and the punks hated each other,' or that those things don't go together musically. Sometimes that is true, but we had equal parts of both in our musical DNA.
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I don't labour over my lead guitar solos; they're better just caught in the moment.
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Obviously, any living musician born after 1960 has been touched by rock and roll. It's the music of our time, and it's 'in the air,' as Steve Reich would say. My experience of it is just really direct because I'm actually playing in a collaborative band.
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Working with Bob Weir directly, we learned how high the bar is for Dead music.
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There's political content in almost every song we've ever written on some level. It colors everything.
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I like to think of myself as a musical scavenger.
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There is much more immediate access to creative music through online communities and blogs which have touched all corners of the music world including contemporary classical.
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In fact, after Donald Trump won, some of the relief of finishing record was to turn off all the politics for a while. There were some songs that had more of the political stuff that we just decided to wait on and put aside. A few weeks after the election, I stopped watching cable news and just unplugged. My way of dealing with the new situation we're in was to just work on something that I care about.
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Bands like Arcade Fire finding a larger audience has opened a lot of doors. They've empowered a whole community in Montreal.
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Writing lyrics with your wife does lead to talking about yourselves a lot. But this is not an autobiographical account of my personal marriage. It's almost about the marriage of the band.
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"I'll Still Destroy You" song is lovingly talking about how we change our states of mind, whether it's weed or wine or whatever. It's an ingredient in my life. Sometimes we overindulge ourselves. I've always been okay with that in a funny way. I sing about that stuff a lot, and the dangers of it.
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We've always been trying to climb this ladder that leans so hard on our own idea of what our big songs are. We realized recently that we're not a band with big songs.
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As a pop musician, as someone who makes songs, the best ideas are the simplest. They come, and that's the lightning bolt moment.