Mark -I support it, I like it, and we worked really hard on it. I think it's the hardest we've worked on an album. It's the best one we've turned out in a long time. I like all the songs and it's pretty representative of what we're into now.
Do you feel that Terror Twilight might be a departure from the other albums you've done in the past?
Mark -There are still a lot of similarities. There's an overall Pavement style that I really wouldn't know how to describe in words. Generally we try not to repeat ourselves and tackle different things, but it gets harder because we've made five records now. We're just trying to do new stuff and I think we've succeeded in doing that. We still have a couple of pop songs and more "out there" stuff with rhythm changes. A lot of the songs we're playing are a little bit more technically difficult than what we were doing before.
Do you find it harder to come up with new material now that you've been going at it for 10 years?
Mark -I don't feel like we've been doing this for 10 years, because we've only spent about a third of that time doing band stuff really. We'll have a song we'll be working on and say "oh, it sounds too much like..." and then have to scratch it, which is a bummer because sometimes it sounds good. We don't want to be a band like the Ramones or the Offspring. They do the same kind of songs over and over again. They do it alright, people like it, but I don't know if people will like it for more than a couple of years. Our favorite bands have surprised us with each record that they've put out, so that's what we want to do for our fans and for ourselves.
As long as you guys are happy with what you're producing, that's all that matters, right?
Mark -Yeah - not to seem selfish about it. I can generally rest easy knowing that we're happy with what we're doing. I can sort assume that our fans will be happy too, because they like us because of what we like about ourselves.
What is it that's different about this album from Brighten the Corners?
Mark -To be really specific, the sound quality is much better. We worked in more expensive studios. We hired a guy that's a really good engineer and also acted as a producer (Niles Godrich) and encouraged better performances from us which we'd never done before. Like our previous record, we're toying with different styles of music, trying to do things we haven't done before. It's a bit more of a flowing record. We narrowed down the songs a lot more, rather than putting pretty much everything on the record like we've done on previous records. The result is an album that seems to be more consistent and easier to listen to from beginning to end.
So you guys feel like the songs are a bit more focused than they were before?
Mark -We've focused pretty heavily in songs before, but I think that these are more consistently focused.
Do you feel like there's a general theme to the album?
Mark -Not really. We generally have a few pop songs on each record, but we sort of jump all over the place and take people on a little trip.
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