AVC: I wouldn’t say the album is depressing, but it touches on a lot of heavy stuff—the pandemic, climate change…It is a bit depressing. I’m about to go on tour. I put together this band in New Zealand of amazing Wellington players, and we’re getting ready to go out. And as soon as I started rehearsing, I thought, “Oh.” Half of the album is kind of heavier, on the slow side.
I would write a lot of these songs in the evenings. I’d foolishly read the news in the evenings, which now they advise you not to do. [] I’d be playing my guitar and just absorbing that feeling of what was going on in the world. And the feelings of the future of the world. There’s something about having kids, something about where things are at. I mean, I wrote “This World Is Broken” four years ago.
AVC: Is it nice to get back to writing for other projects after doing all of this writing for yourself where you have to dig deep into your emotions?] It is fun. What’s interesting is it’s not like they’re two completely different worlds. What’s been fun is by writing these songs for myself I’ve cracked another part of the songwriting puzzle, and I can use those skills for the films. Early on when I was writing for film I found it hard to write anything that didn’t have a joke in it.
And then working on the Muppets stuff I sort of started to see how that worked. I did this incredible concert with the Muppets in Wellington, with an orchestra, and it was crazy. I sang “Rainbow Connection” with Kermit onstage, and it was so cool, but people in the crowd are just crying. Grown men are weeping at the nostalgia of the Muppets. I was like, “Whoa.” I spent my whole life making people laugh. This is a whole different thing.
Who ever staged this photo should remember water and electricity don’t mix, no power cords.