Most of the lyrics are over a year old, and it doesn't feel like it's about me. Time created a distance.

We're thinking about printing the lyrics with the next record so that people can find their own meaning in them. But then they would start having a life of their own, and I think the Portishead music should stay a whole in which the lyrics come second, actually.

You feel the music needs something but you don't know what. So you start searching, fitting, measuring, trying. Every time you try another angle. And sometimes that's frustrating, especially if you don't come up with something for three days.

I think that after a year of Portishead I've become a little more sober.

All of those stories about my interview-fear date from the beginning of the band. At the time of our first interviews everything was new and unclear, so I usually was staring at a reporter with this big question mark above my head. I just didn't know it then. It was too new, and I was nervous and paranoid.

You feel the music needs something but you don't know what. So you start searching, fitting, measuring, trying. Every time you try another angle. And sometimes that's frustrating, especially if you don't come up with something for three days.