Arlie: When we first started, we had been a band about three months before we started playing shows. At the time there was a certain amount of interest in the band from a number of different labels. Some of us hadn't known each other for very long, some of us only knew each other in passing--so we wanted to take things really slow. We asked ourselves, "Do we even like each other enough to be a band?" A lot of people who don't know each other get together and start bands because they want to get a record deal, or they want to take over the world, or whatever...

I think, for us, having a certain amount of humility and trepidation about being a "band" allowed us to take things slowly. Let's make some 7-inches for different labels. Let's do some tours and see if we like touring with each other. We intentionally took some baby steps before we decided to start talking with record labels about full-lengths. One particular label ate up about a year-and-a-half of our life without anything coming to fruition, and then we decided to work with Pacifico and DeSoto, which really was a fantastic thing for us.

Gabe: And it probably was the best thing for us, because if that first record had been put out a year-and-a-half earlier it probably would have been terrible.

Arlie: So it took us three years to put out our first record because all we really wanted to do was put out some 7-inches, tour, and see if we like each other enough and felt like the music we were making was strong enough to be worthy of all that additional effort. Once you're on a label, that's a weight...it's a responsibility.

Yeah, there is a hefty amount of expectation that has to be met.

I've heard it mentioned by the band that there is only one proper guitar solo on This Is the Way It Goes and Goes and Goes. I'm curious as to where exactly that solo is?

Gabe: I guess it's on "A Listening Ear."

Arlie: One of my favorite things is on one of the Talk Talk songs off of Laughing Stock. There's sort of this hideous quacking sound that becomes enormous during the middle of this song, and it's so loud and so cacaphonous that it's almost unbearable. Mark Hollis said in an interview that it was the only guitar solo that he's ever included in his music.

There's a rule in our band: No guitar solos. There might be kind of guitar squiggles, but no solos. I think of the noodley, squiggly guitar sounds as creating shapes.

I agree and, strangely, I find the guitar playing to be similar to what Neil Young creates at times with his guitar: very overdrived, very distored, lots of tension building. While Neil's definitely a solo freak and you are not, both are similar in that the guitars are constructing shapes and panting canvasses; using the instrument to be more than just the sum of so many chords.

Arlie: There's a Jeff Buckley song where he uses a vacuum cleaner in a part where there's supposed to be a guitar solo. He just turned on the vacuum cleaner and they recorded it.

Gabe: Where is that?

Arlie: It's on the album Grace. It's just the sound of a vacuum going "vrrrrooooooo." It's fucking great.

Gabe: [Jokingly] Wow! That's almost as cool as Eddie Van Halen and the drill!

Arlie: Whoa, dude!

Do you find yourselves doing similar things in the studio?

Arlie: That's all secret weapon bullshit. We can't talk about that.

Gabe: Yeah, we spend the whole day hitting pianos with drumsticks to make the guitars resonate.

Speaking of strange plucking sounds, one of my favorite tracks on the album, "The Trail of Your Blood in the Snow," has what sounds like a thumb piano. It gives the piece a warm, lullaby-like feel that I really enjoy.

Gabe: It's a sleeper track.

Arlie: That's Gabe playing keyboards.

Great song...probably my favorite on the album.

Arlie: That's a fucking dope song.

There's a line in "Help Is on the Way," off the new release, where you refer to "missing torsos." I've heard you bring this up in other interviews as a reference to Washington state, but I don't get the connection. What's the explanation behind it?

Arlie: When a friend of mine first moved up here to go to medical school a number of years ago, he was in Auburn and for whatever reason he pulled off to the side of the road. In the ditch along the roadside was a headless, legless, armless torso of a 12-year-old.

Wow...

Arlie: Yeah, that was his introduction to Washington state. As well, when I was a kid I had a sister who was nine years older than me, and she had a friend who was one of the Green River Killer's victims.

Also, Gabe has pointed out that here in Washington the trees are really eerie...

Gabe: They're static--they never change. Time doesn't seem to pass.

Arlie: And I find that kind of horrifying. The whole mood of western Washington...it's always raining, it's murky, it's foggy. And this state is sort of the kind of place where you'll be walking through the woods and you'll find a foot.

It's very Lynchian.

Gabe: Yeah, it's like in Blue Velvet where he finds the ear--and there's no answer or storyline to go along with it.

Arlie: Right, there's just the ear or the foot, and it's fucking creepy. So for awhile I've been referring to Washington as the "Land of a Thousand Missing Torsos."

It's one of my more favored metaphors for Washington state. The use of it in that song ("Help Is on the Way") isn't to say that that is what the song is about, because all of our songs tend to be about four or five different stories that tie into one another. A lot of the time when we're on tour and passing through different cities it feels like we're just these ghosts; like we're missing torsos in a van passing through. Being on tour is a very lifeless thing.

Right, like you're a half-life. Existing, but not on any real tangible terms.

Years ago I was travelling through southern Utah and stopped at a 7-11 in this two-bit town in the middle of nowhere to get some water and road snacks. Working behind the counter was a girl I went to high school with. I mean, this place was so desolate that even the tumbleweeds avoided this town. All I could think to say to her was, "What the fuck...?"

Arlie: Right! "What the fuck are you doing working here?!"

"What the fuck in your life has led you to this place in the middle of nowhere?"

Gabe: She testified against the mob and that's why she's there in the middle of nowhere in southern Utah. She was probably some palooka's stripper girlfriend who saw the wrong thing at the wrong time and now runs a 7-11 in the middle of nowhere.

Arlie: It's fucking weird! We're on tour all the time and we'll be travelling through North Dakota somewhere and we'll stop at a Texaco because the next town is 200 miles away. You walk in and there's some guy behind the counter who doesn't have some North or South Dakota accent--he's got some fucking Boston accent!

Gabe: And he's selling Richard Marx tapes!

Arlie: Ha ha! Yeah, and he's selling these Richard Marx tapes and you're like, "There is no way you're from fucking North Dakota, man!"

So people leading these half-lives, they're sort of missing torsos; and sometimes when you're on tour you feel that way...like there's no good reason to be here because this town couldn't give a fuck.

I wanted to talk briefly about your snowboarding accident. I know it's not a topic you're fond of rehashing over and again, and enough press has already been given to the degree your accident may or may not have affected your music, and I don't say that to try to minimize the psychological and physical effects it had. What struck me the most about it was how quickly you were back playing shows after you were back on your feet. How important was it for you to get back onstage? Did you feel you had something to prove, if even to yourself?

Arlie: Yeah... Let's try to keep this one real short. I like what we do as a band. I really care about it and I genuinely think what we do is an important thing. It doesn't matter if it's important to anybody else, but it's important to me that I do it. When we crack the whip on each other to get stuff done, we all want to see it come through, and when I broke my neck it completely threw everything off and put all our lives on hold.

I'm a patient person, but if there's one thing I don't like, it's to feel that my life has been put on hold. I was paralyzed for a time and the doctors said I was going to be in a halo for three to five months, and if that didn't work they would have to break my neck again and start all over.

When I got out of the halo I did a ton of physical therapy and stayed really focused on that. We ended up going back out on tour well before I should have, which ultimately wound up putting me back in the hospital because of exhaustion. We ended up canceling a European tour and a whole lot of other shit as a result of it, but that's basically the answer. I really felt that after going through that huge ordeal that getting back on tour, getting back into life and work would be a joyful thing to do, when really it was a premature thing to do.

The reason why I bring that up was I recall reading an interview back in '99 where you said that your accident had affected your singing style.

Arlie: Yup.

And one of the things I notice about A Future Live in Past Tense is that you're very much in possession of your voice.

Arlie: That's because I felt I was operating from a deficit, so I felt like I had to try that much harder. They did three surgeries on me, one of which was to put in titanium screws and plates. When they did that they came in from the front, from the throat, where they usually come in from the back of the neck. In going in from the front they ended up severing two nerves that essentially operate your voice.

When we got back to practicing in preparation for going back out on tour, I realized that I really could not sing the way that I used to. For the past two years I've been trying to navigate and figure out what I like about my voice, and figuring out what doesn't work any more and how I can work around that.

I think more than anything that if this record, if the way I sing the words on it, feels more focused or self-possessed, then it's because the lyrics are about things that are more immediate in my life. When you lay around in a halo for four months you've got a lot to think about, so when I started writing lyrics for new songs I had some things on my mind and I was just very focused.

That focus and self-possession shows up very noticeably on "Things Gone and Things Still Here," which is a short story spoken over a drum loop. Where did the idea come for that song? It seems such a broad step away from anything else on the album.

Gabe: Musically, we'd always planned on doing a reprise to "Covered with Hair," which is essentially what that song was intended to be. Arlie said he had a short story, and we were in the studio and really hadn't worked out the reprise yet, so we had Arlie go out and read it and added the drum machine.

It reminds me of something that Laurie Anderson might do.

Arlie: I sort of had the Talking Heads in mind, but I'm super down with the Laurie Anderson comparison! I also love Steven Jesse Bernstein, and that record he did on Sub Pop years ago [Prison] really influenced me. It was such a powerful thing.