Gil was really good in that he would listen to the demos, and he would get the energy of just that raw first draft of the song and he was able to grow on that, still maintaining that initial energy and the direction of that song. He never tried to change a song, what it's original incarnation was, just try to improve it and get the point across more directly and more thoroughly.

We had done three records with Mark, and we had gotten really comfortable with each other, so I think we lost that friendly push-pull relationship.

Number one is we don't have day jobs. And something that stems from that is we're able to get together more often.

We had been touring for about two years, so our minds were in tour mode, definitely. We thought we had done it and changed over to a studio mind, and we started to do the writing and recording and stuff, and we realized that you know what, no, we're not ready, actually. So we had to step back and really just get centered and get focused and ready to do it.