Erlandson: There's good teamwork on this album.

Love: It's not always the most friendly teamwork.

Erlandson: Teamwork is never friendly.

Love: I woke up with my bullhorn, not a boyfriend, this morning. For my video, I had a bullhorn. I'm not putting down the director, because she was really good. But literally, it was my directorial debut last night. I just had to get a bullhorn.

Auf Der Maur: You doing the choreography with the girls was amazing ...

Love: How was that? All this stuff I learned in the last two years about film -- I actually learned. I didn't know that I learned it. About shots, crane shots, dolly shots, about editing, about lighting stuff, framing. [laughs] I was impressed with myself.

Erlandson: What we need is someone like that, in charge of that, to look out for us and tell the director. We need, like, a middle person.

Love: Producer.

Erlandson: Producer.

Love: She had a producer problem. Big producer problem. It's not her fault. She just, like, has no leadership skills and tells you you look good when you don't. Civilization sort of broke down at 8 o'clock this morning. There was no civilization at 8 o'clock this morning. And the director, at one point, she said, "You look really good." I said, "Shut up, I wanna hear what my posse says." I got really rude. It was bad. That was why.

ATN: Do you feel you've really expressed a lot of feelings about some kind of major things that have happened to you in the lyrics on this album?

Love: It's a place that I'm not reactive about, so I don't care what people think. There's that line. There's also the line of restraint, exploitation and subtext. And also coding, encoding. What do you wanna restrain? What do you wanna hold back? What do you wanna say? And when I found myself striking lines because they were too much, I really was a little bit torn. Am I censoring? Am I censoring or am I exploiting? I'm not going to exploit. So this isn't censoring.

And then I read an incredible quote from Bob Dylan, who I love and is an important part of stuff I listened to as a child. And he said -- it was arrogant but that works for me -- he said: "I'm not gonna tell you everything." It was to a rock critic. It was to a journalist. He said, "I'm not gonna tell you everything. But what I do choose to tell you is better than the guy across the street." I am not going to tell you everything because I am not going to be Judy Garland and die in front of a thousand clowns. [she claps] This is all I can say.

It's like there's stuff that's none of anyone's business. But there's stuff I need to express, so how do I do that freely? And I found it, I think, without compromising my own integrity about what goes on. And you know, I started reading a lot of Rilke, a lot of really elevated, spiritual Rilke, rather than your Rock 101 poetry: Rimbaud, Baudelaire. I started really reading a lot of Rilke because it's so elevated and he doesn't tell you everything but yet he's ... It's just so 'not pornography.' It's not morphine poems about the cat.

Auf Der Maur: It's also universal. More than specific to the one individual's ...

Love: Yeah, that's right. That's right. The one thing I've done for years, though, is basically just walk around with my big Leonard Cohen book. I think I listen to Leonard Cohen probably every day. It's my religion. I do that more than I chant. I listen to Leonard Cohen pretty much every day of my life. I just do it. Then I'll hear something like Polly Harvey and I'll go, "I failed." But then that's not what I was trying to do on this, you know.

ATN: What were you trying to do?

Love: I wasn't trying to do anything except make a great, great, great record that people would like. I feel like an architect more than anything else. It's like we make art for lots and lots of reasons, but ultimately, I think we make art to prove to our grandchildren that our genes were worth having, you know. So we make monuments, we erect monuments. If I'm an architect and we're architects and we built this building, this building has to be as much of a personal vision as it is ... also the doors have all got to work and it's got to be accessible, the rooms have got to be airy and light. It can't just be like a fucked-up building just to make a statement. It has to be a functional but insane building. And it's that sort of "Fountainhead" thing ... So I was trying to erect something completely original, derivative, true, false ... you know, I don't know, I'm conflicted. What was I consciously trying to do? Write good lyrics. What was I not trying to do? Tell you everything there is to tell you, without ... It's none of anyone's business.