For me, personally, on a basic level, I probably have become a bit more melancholy at this phase of my life than I was when I was 21. But I think itâs natural. When we made our first album, and when those first songs were written â and maybe this is why people connected to it â that album clearly gave off a collegiate vibe. Everything about it gives that aura, and thatâs how old we were when those songs were written. In the very early days, right around the time that I started writing âOxford Commaâ and Rostam started writing âCampus,â that was all there. Like anybody, whether youâre in college or in your early twenties, doing whatever, thereâs a sense that itâs an eternal springtime. And thatâs also true for a band thatâs making their first album. So we had that threefold: A bunch of young cats, fresh out of college, suddenly people have interest in our band! That atmosphere was in the air. And then when you do something a second time itâs still exciting, and youâre building and you start to get to the third time, and unless youâre a total craven careerist, youâre going to pause a little bit and be like, âOK, so weâre doing this for a third time. Weâre now five or six years older than when we started. Is this just a job? Are we just banging out products of varying degrees of quality, based on an initial template? Or are we trying to do something different?â So that right there is an introspective question. You donât have to ask yourself too much like, âWho am I? Who are we?â on your first two albums, because a good band usually starts and a bunch of ideas are there and youâre excited. But if we had made âContraâ Part Two it wouldnât have worked. When âContraâ came out, to me it seemed very different from the first album, but in some ways the first album is like A and the second album is like A Prime. Itâs like a lot of the same ideas taken to a new level. This album does feel a little different. And those first two were a little closer together in time, so thatâs naturally going to feel a little different. But if we had made another album that was too close to the first two, I think the fans probably would have been a little bored and we would have been a little bored. You have to become a little bit more introspective to figure out why you should keep being a band. If your first batch of ideas run out of steam a little bit, you have to stop and ask what it means to be a band or a songwriter. Because itâs very easy to succumb to the pressure of just feeling like, âTime to make an albumâŚâ Sometimes that could produce something thatâs good and casual and quick, but that wouldnât have worked for us this time. Maybe in the future. I donât want to spend every three years of my life obsessing over this.  âEzra Koenig
gummygunk
titsay
izzy806
stormborns
gracieabrams
snowghoul
vaporwave
pixelskylines
