It's not crazy to want to have certain songs be developed harmonically and still want to make noise with the guitar. And you can have both.

I get very frustrated by this term 'genre exercise.' I mean, what exactly is that? Genre is not really relevant when you are writing a song; hopefully you are doing it to explore something, to create something, and I don't agree that any of my albums are genre exercises.

It's what I do. I don't deserve any awards for this, it's just music. It's just writing songs. You sit down, you write a song, you record it. You tour and play the songs live, dress them up a bit differently, or dress them down.

Certain songs have been written years apart, but they have a natural continuity to my mind.

I've always felt writing a song was a bit like going on location. That's true in an almost literal sense. Where you are seeps in somehow.