I could probably spend the next five years reworking an album from ten years ago, if given the chance, to make it better - make it best, so to speak..

Lyrics are what I tend to tear hair out over and they're where I tend to feel weak musically, if I'm being very honest. It is not something I feel li….

I think that sonically, music speaks volumes more than words do, and I have always thought that and will continue to think that for the rest of my li….

I'm sure that's every adolescent's complaint about their home town. When a city is unstimulating, you get pretty isolated..

I want a song that raises the hair on the back of my neck when I sing it live and I want to feel it every time..

I was a very good student until about sophomore year, and that's when I just became so disillusioned with the whole thing that I just became an awful….

I mean the reason that I started writing close to home, "Santa Fe," et cetera, was a kind of looking back on past events. I don't know, it's just som….

I think that there's a proliferation of music that is done entirely in the bedroom for an Internet audience, but there's no way in hell that you coul….

It's just not an image I had ever put out about myself - the bedroom synth guy. The whole thing seemed ridiculous..

I'm very flash and burn - the first thing that comes to mind is obviously the best idea, and that's because it should come out of a natural place, an….

I'm not an amazing trumpet player. It's mostly smoke and mirrors. You shake the trumpet and it starts to vibrate in a ridiculous drunken way, or you ….

Often when I find myself listening to music, at least 60 to 70% of it is foreign, so I don't understand a word of it. Melody to me will always be a m….

I was always looking outside of myself for stories and ideas and influences and then I kind of realized in 2010, that all of this time, I've develope….

It's funny because you do often read in recounts of very famous albums, people tend to focus on mistakes in really positive ways, and there's certain….

There was always a unique Beirut sound, it was always there, and so this time I just dove straight into that, instead of daydreaming and wandering..

You always know when a real inspiration is behind the melody, arrangements, even lyrics. And I know that's really vague, but it's true..

Raucous drunken trumpets and instrumentation tend to guide the way you think. They can give you a path to follow lyrically..

My dad is obsessed with music, so I was raised around this guitar player that really wanted me to be a guitar player..

There is a beauty to touring - to be honest, there's a way that music connects and you really feel the actual reaction of people to the music that yo….

As a teenager and a young adult, I never felt like my own story was interesting enough to tell, so I always wrote lyrics from someone else's perspect….

I write one step at a time, always finishing off the part I'm working on before even thinking about the next part. I need to hear it all together bef….