It is. It is political in a sense. It’s really just more observational than anything. We have an amazing job. We get to travel around the world and experience different cultures, and just learn so many things. I learned more in the last six years in this band than I ever learned in school. It’s not to say that I didn’t learn anything in Alaska because I [did]. [Especially] from my mom and dad—their views on things are so different. We never really cared about money. We’re all hard workers, so the times when we didn’t have money, we would just work harder. [But as a band,] we just get to experience so many things. An album a year is not a crazy amount of music. We play music every time of day. We should be able to write songs for a new album every six months. If you think about it, it’s not a crazy amount of writing.

—John Gourley, Interview Magazine