Jon Hopkins Quotes

I've also become much more the musician I've always wanted to be.

As I'm growing, so is my music.

How do we keep it up? Because that's what we do; we're musicians, and we love to play and make music. And with every album, we get better, and with every tour, we get better.

People don't tend to notice, but in the past 10 years especially there's been a lot of growth in how I write songs and what goes into them. You can listen to Mountain Goats from 1991 to 2007 and never hear a seventh chord. In 2007 or 2008, I started working on the piano to grow as a songwriter. I started throwing major sevens in and sixes and more interesting stuff.

I think the musical evolution I've gone through has come from all the work with the material.

The band is a living, breathing thing. It grows in the same way we do as human beings and if it doesn't, it dies. It's important to feed the organism, and one way of doing that is to set musical challenges that keep it alive.

Everytime we put a record out, we lose people that can't deal with the growth.

You can't stay the same. If you're a musician and a singer, you have to change, that's the way it works.

I'm constantly on my toes and re-examining my own music.

And this whole period of time of gradually working at being a better guitar player and songwriter have gradually led me to the point where I feel I'm doing a clearer representation of the thing that I've been feeling inside me since I was four years old.

My only ambition is to grow as a musician.

There's been a progression in my sound.

It doesn't really change, actually. I think The Rolling Stones have gotten a lot better. An awful lot better, I think. A lot of people don't, but I think they have, and to me that's gratifying. It's worth it.

Playing music is a lifetime's work. And if you want to carry on with it, you have to try to better yourself. You have to see where the music can take you.

I'm just going to make the music I love to make, and I'm going to mature with my music.

I'm constantly evolving as a musician.

Every time you come out with an album or a song, you want to feel like you're growing a bit in what you are and giving people something that they can feel.

What I love about each album is the opportunity to expand on what we've done in the past - to push myself and the band creatively, vocally, and lyrically.

As my guitar playing dwindled, something else in my music got better.

It started off with me being all the way influenced by Atlanta and southern music but I knew my sound had to grow - I started learning melodies.

We were never hip, which is fine with me. We aren't that interested in that whole situation. But all the times how we tried and failed to get across in our music, we actually succeeded on 'Superstar Car Wash.'

It's all a progression towards hopefully one day making a record that can be the definitive you can offer. Some bands come in with that at first, and the great bands never really stray from that. I want to earn my stripes.

Every time I make a new album, I get better and better.

'Tongue' is literally just one piece of the puzzle. This album is something I've worked on over the course of my entire career and something I've been discovering myself in it.

When I started making music I wanted it to have a narrative and be conceptual, but as time went on I thought it was probably more practical for a first album just to have good music.