looking back

When I worked with the Sugarcubes it was really really different because I just wrote my melodies and my lyrics and that was all. We were going into rehearsal rooms and there’d be some beats or some chords or whatever, and I’d usually write my melodies on top of what somebody else had done. So that’s a very different method and has a very different outcome too, where I was being more reactionary. It’s not a bad thing thing, but I guess when you make your own music on your own, you’re the one who starts, you’re—where you are coming from, and you get to be reactionary to that, so it’s more like your own point of view.

I think it’s not a coincidence a lot of bands are formed when people are 14-15, and it’s rare that they last longer than 25, because that’s sort of the age where you’re sort of forming your views of the world, and your gang or your friends or whatever [are] setting up a certain philosophy you would probably maintain for the rest of your life, and that’s kind of quite natural to do that in a group where you’re just part of many, it’s not about individualism. And then once you form that sort of statement you break off and become more individual.

New Zealand Herald (Online) 19 November 2007