Tatone: Do you have any ideals of where you want to see yourself, say, next year?

Sparta: It's hard to say.

Erickson: The furthest we can think is, we wanna go to Europe.

Hoysten: We wanna keep the music really real and fresh too. If we planned too much, like "We're gonna be a band three years from now," what if we're turning out crap? We'd feel obligated to play together because we've had this dream. I think it's important for us to keep reevaluating what we're doing and making sure that we still feel like we're making some good art.

Tatone: I wanted to ask about the song "Other Animals Are #1." It seems to imply anti-capitalist, anti-technology — maybe anti-human — sentiment, saying we are the least evolved of all species because of our efficiency. Could you talk about the driving factors behind the lyrics and the personal beliefs that inspired them?

Hoysten: Wow. That's a time period for me, as a songwriter, where I was writing a lot about evolution vs. social Darwinism. I was thinking about how the development of society took over non-human members of the planet [that] were developing in a different way and adapting to us, rather than us having to adapt to anything. It was more an observation because of things I was reading and thinking about, as opposed to a stance. Although there's obviously an opinion in "Other Animals Are #1," I'm not anti-human or anything.

Jaffe: Not speaking for Jenny — because she's the one who wrote the lyrics — but being from the Bay Area and watching the drastic changes that are happening with technology.... It's not like, "Oh, they say they hate technology, but their guitars wouldn't be very loud without amplifiers." It's more the new techie revolution going on in the area where we live that we have a problem with, [and] how they treated the area and the people that already lived there, in San Francisco and Oakland. That kind of displacement.

Tatone: Do you view technology as destructive in general?

Erickson: I think a lot of it is really unnecessary.

Hoysten: I think it'd be really stupid to say that it's bad. I think a general trend toward more technology is just inevitable. It's the kind of thing that we could drag our feet about, but it's gonna happen no matter what. But, in general, humans are in this automated state. I think it's inevitable, but we don't necessarily have to like the byproducts of it.

Erickson: I think the most important thing about it is that people involved with it or developing it need to have a sense of responsibility for it, and what they're bringing new technologies into, and how it's affecting people. Who is it affecting and who isn't it affecting?

Jaffe: Yeah, whether it be the location of their business or the people that work for their business, affecting a community. Or whether it be the fact that only certain people have access to certain technologies.

Hoysten: I think all those developments are creating classes because that's just the nature of funding — it has a lot to do with money.

Tatone: Do you think technology is part of our evolution? And if it is, is there a better way to evolve?

Hoysten: I think its part of our de-evolution.