THE BELIEVER: You’ve said before how much you’re inspired by soul music, and that really rings true with what you’re saying now. Because soul music has that kind of stumbling around, saying stupid lines about things you really mean, and hoping to fall into something true.

WILL SHEFF: Look at a song like “Please, Please, Please,” the first James Brown single from 1956, where the lyrics are like: “Please please please please please please please don’t go yah no I love you so I just want to say I I I I I…” It doesn’t need to be some dumb Shakespeare sonnet set to music: it’s an outpouring of emotion. Songwriting is an emotional medium, and rock and roll is an emotional medium. When you listen to something like Otis Redding or even Sam Cooke, in a sense, you know in that Live at the Harlem Square Club  recording…

BLVR: Yeah, I love that album.

WS: Sam Cooke and Otis Redding are people that brought this tremendous amount of intelligence and used it to shape this tremendous amount of emotion that they had. And the result is this sculpture, with an insane, wild, passionate emotion that has been very carefully sculpted by a really ordered, controlled thought process.

I don’t pretend to be one twentieth as good as Sam Cooke on his worst night, but that’s a real inspiration for me.

BLVR: You talk a lot about the Incredible String Band.

WS: I think that’s another example of pretentiousness: they’re so pretentious, but it works for me because they believe it. Robin Williamson sings like he is going to part the seas and calm the waters and bring the rain from the skies. He believes it. And it’s such a stupid idea—but believing makes it so, and I think that’s the thing about pop music. It’s a touchingly idiotic, thorough, complete dedication to the dumbest ideas that there are. As people we’re dumb, stumbling idiots—and rock and roll is one of the only art forms that fully cops to that and revels in it.

BLVR: I like what you’re saying about pop music and dumb ideas—turning dumb ideas sort of over in your heart, and then seeing what happens… What dumb ideas do you sing about with your band?

WS: I’ve always just been really impressed by a song that can take a simple sentiment and transform it. Like “Please Please Please,” that James Brown song. It’s almost a meditation on the word please,and his idea of begging someone, and yet he turns it into such a towering thing. Or with the Velvet...