"You know to be honest, I wasn't sure if I was ever going to do another record. I was really kind of heading in the direction of scoring and soundtrack stuff, and I had to kind of re-investigate my entire process. I basically had to fundamentally change the way I approach making music, and part of that meant I think, you know, I need to change my environment completely and I had to get out of New York.
Once I wrote the first song for the record I realized that this is the type of record I think I was going to have to do completely on my own. I left my label and it became a completely self-financed, independent project. And so that meant I was gonna have to make my ideal record and somehow achieve some sort of fantasy scenario and there are four things that ended up being imperative to achieving that fantasy scenario.
So the first part of the equation was to find the guy that helped create these atmospheric, kind of dreamscape-y sound for a band called Doves. Doves is my favorite bands - very influential band - and though they do most of their work themselves and they're very independent, they do allow this man Steve into their world so I really desperately wanted to find him.
The second element I wanted to find was the children's choir. I write these melodies sometimes that are just built for a children's choir. And I've never worked with a children's choir before, so I need to find this choir.
The third element was recording all of this to tape, to... to actual tape which doesn't really exist anymore, and so it was very important for me for this to be an analog project....
The fourth element was finding the drummer in a band called My Morning Jacket. His name is Patrick Hallahan. I asked him if he wanted to do it. I sent him some songs, he came over, and we hung out, we had a drink - couple of drinks - and he's been one of most supportive friends and artists for me in this project. So we all packed up and we went to England and I ended up at Real World Studios which is Peter Gabriel's studio that he built just outside of Bath.
And Real World ended up being kind of this secret fifth element I didn't know I needed, but I did. And it was just so wonderful, I had never lived and worked in a studio before and it was truly one of most magical moments I've ever had in my life.
Oh, it's beautiful!"
