It's easy to make an album full of great songs. But I want people to go for the ride. The songs have to make sense together.
I think every artist's next work will reflect a new chapter in their autobiography. Each album tells a story about where they were at during a particular period and how they have evolved.
However, there's no theme or concept behind Heathen, just a number of songs but somehow there is a thread that runs through it that is quite as strong as any of my thematic type albums.
I kind of like the idea of creating my own literature within my albums. I definitely thought about that when I started writing songs.
A lot of people put out albums with sort of crappy songs and a couple of singles because they know no one's going to listen to it anyway. We very much wanted it to be something that you do listen to from beginning to end and had a narrative that was important.
When it's a rapper's album or a singer's album, there's a tendency to want a text-based or theme-based narrative.
I've waited for the day my debut album is released my entire life, so naturally I've designed it to be listened to from start to finish - so every song flows into each other in a way that tells a sonic story.
I like to have an album arc that comes from an experience rather than a story.
I've never wanted to name an album from a song title if I could avoid it because I like it to be a body of work.
With our first record, we wrote concept songs but not a concept record.
