On Of Men and Angels release:

“It’s not normal for a record to come out a year after it’s done,” he says. “It’s usually more like five, six months.” He sighs, knowing there’s nothing he can do about it. This is the major-label machine he’s dealing with. And that, for better or worse, has always been his dream. “It’s coming out,” he finally musters, “and that’s all that matters.”

On Do You Feel? vs. Of Men and Angels:

“I think everyone can relate to that, y’know? There’s a lyric in one of the songs called ‘This Is a Refuge’ where it says, ‘I don’t want to look back in all my years/Recollecting the mistakes/Because then it will be clear of how I ran/And chased a place my whole life/And then become aware that I was there.’ It’s basically just that idea of something I was just yearning for.”

Specifically, he’s referencing his last release, 2007’s Do You Feel?, his first on a major label, the burden he felt to produce the kind of hit record the label wanted and the disappointment he felt when the album didn’t find him at the top of the music industry heap. Looking back, he knows where he went wrong. He meticulously prepared for that album—to a fault, actually—making mix CDs containing hundreds of his favorite pop songs, trying to break them down scientifically to see what made them so effective.