There seem to be some familiar lyrical themes on Burning Sosobra. Do you care to field a few questions about these at all?

Rob: Sure. Most of the time I don't talk to people much about the lyrics because I don't like the idea of taking away something that's important to someone. If somebody reads something into the words that I didn't necessarily intend to be there, I feel like if I say, "This is what this means, or this is what that means," it sort of takes it away from them. So it's a tough one...but anyway, go ahead. [Laughter]

Now I don't feel like asking any of these questions.

Rob: No, no, in the worst case we'll just skip 'em, or I just give you some stupid answer and you'll say, "What the hell was that...?"

Okay... "Exiled" calls to mind the origin of the band's name. I remember reading somewhere you said that a "floater" was a guy who was an outcast...

Rob: Yeah, it's kind of the equivalent of a "drifter."

Right, so "Exiled" comes off as the epitome of a Floater song, just referencing all the "floaters" kind of gathering.

And when you least expect it, there ends up being a whole clan of people, and where it came from is that feeling. The individual members of the band definitely feel like that...all alone. And as a band in the music business, we totally feel like that. "Floater" is what we're about as people. We can't get on MTV or the radio or anything. And that's not necessarily for lack of, I don't know, people thinking that we're any good or anything like that, but primarily because we're just sort of exiles in the land of popular culture. And I think a lot of people feel like that, but what you start to discover is...

Say you're a musician and you can't seem to feel like anyone is ever paying any attention. One day you look out and there's a crowd of people, and they all totally identify with you. And all those people identify with you because they all feel the same way, and there's a kind of cult... I mean, people like to call it Gen-X or the underground, or indie or punk rock or whatever, but it's essentially the cult of the minority. It's the outcasts. There's a tendency to feel like you're the only one, but you're not.

I had a weird series of dreams about these barbarians in an Arabic culture in the desert, and if you don't follow their god, or worship their idols or whatever, you're tossed out to survive on your own. And you think, my god, I'm going to die out here, and that's when you run into all the other people that were tossed out on their own because they didn't fit. The idea of the song was very much to me that if you don't give in to that anger and bitterness and that depression, but instead you carve and squeeze the fat from the land and you pull people together, you can come back and take over. And I think in a lot of ways it's sort of a mobilization song...you know, don't just sit back and feel pathetic. Love who you are.

Which plays back into the "call to arms" theme of Burning Sosobra.

Rob: Yeah, and I think, in some of the music that we've done before, there's been a real feeling of loneliness, desperation, sadness and isolation. In a lot of ways it's a logical progression, or at least a hopeful, optimistic progression where you would eventually look up from the ground and say, "Alright. It's time to make a move."

Next was "I Know," where there seems to be a lot of lyrical correlation with "Cinema."

Rob: I think maybe "I Know" is not necessarily "Cinema," but almost the whole album Glyph. I think that "I Know" is sort of the next step...for me. Not for everybody, but it's something like "The Knowing Dirge" or "Cinema" as very much oriented towards pushing the limits and seeing how far you can go, how deep you can get. "I Know" is kind of the result of that.

Rob: Yeah, I can see that. And "The Knowing Dirge," there's a sense of fear in that song. It's a sort of ode to anyone who is determined to self-explore and, through whatever means, they get a look way deep into themselves. And sometimes when you look deep into yourself it's incredibly horrible, and that can be a learning experience, hopefully. But a lot of people have really terrifying inner voyages, where there's some stuff that they may not have paid any attention to for too long, and now it's real ugly. So there's a lot of self-discovery mixed with fear in "The Knowing Dirge" and I think definitely in "Here Comes the Dog" there's the same thing. There's a part of you making itself known that is a little terrifying. I think it's definitely part of human nature, or at least a part of some people's human nature, to self-examine and to kind of dig their hands into their rib cage and feel around, and sometimes that can go a little too far.

In mid-October you guys played a benefit concert in Seattle for JAMPAC (Joint Artists and Music Promotions Political Action Committee). What are they about?

Rob: Essentially what they're about is protecting musicians and promoters and lobbying for their rights. They're the only political committee with that as their focus. They formed not that long ago because there was a push by the Washington Liquor Control Commission to shut down any concert that had alcohol and underage crowds. And the OLCC here in Oregon has done the same thing.

They pushed and pushed, and they won, and it meant without any doubt the end of the entire Seattle music scene. A lot of the clubs, bands, booking agents, promoters, sound guys roadies, etc., were going to be destroyed by it, and their rationale for this was that they didn't want girls under 21 to be around guys that were drunk. Which is just the stupidest, most presumptuous...I mean, to me it's phenomenally sexist to assume that girls under 21 are that stupid.

So Krist Novoselic got together JAMPAC by making a coalition of promoters and venue owners and musicians that were all interested in preserving the integrity of the Seattle music scene. And that branched out down into Portland as well. What they would do is have these benefit concerts, and we would go up and play the show, and all of the money goes to JAMPAC for education and flyers, etc., and it worked. They ended up defeating the bill and having it overturned, so there's still all-ages shows.

It's definitely an important thing to preserve in Portland as well.

Rob: Yeah. It's sickening that we have to fight against something that ridiculous, but we do.

How has the connection with the audience changed over time?

Because of belligerence?

Rob: No, because they would never go far enough. I had this overwhelming desire for it to be mayhem. Just totally out of control. I wanted to have everyone naked and in some sort of Faustian image of hell...just people screwing and fighting, and free food for the masses, and you know, just chaos. And it was always just kind of a lot of people looking up, and that would just frustrate me so bad.

But over the years it's really changed tremendously, and I think a lot of it is that I've had a lot of people talk to me through e-mail and letters, and even in person--which is a lot harder because I'm really naturally not very social and tend to really want to be left alone most of the time. I've had a lot of people recount these stories to me of what their life was like and what they were going through and they found "X" album, and it made this big change for them.

I was really frustrated because I didn't think I was having any effect or impact at all, and when I started realizing that people were having this emotional opening it made me have more feeling for what I was doing. The songs began to take on a new life, and it went from being two-dimensional--by me, for me--to being three-dimensional where I can have a song like "Independence Day" that's an incredibly personal song about my life and my relationship, and then have people come up to me and say "Hey, I've been through this, and I can't tell you how much this means to me." It's like it fleshes out, and it becomes so much more powerful. It's made me have an enormous, almost awe for the audience. I feel like my respect and caring level [for them] has gone through the roof.

So it completes the experience of writing the song.

Rob: Yeah, and it's weird. A song has an enormous amount of meaning when you write it because it's something you feel like you have to say. I write really personally, and if I feel something and it makes me really angry and I write about it, that makes me feel better. And if I go out and sing about it, that makes me feel even better. So it's a very emotional experience.

But at the same time, if you know that a bunch of other people feel that way, it makes it feel that way even more so. It's sort of the difference between, you know, if you got beat up by your dad and you went out and screamed about it, it's purgative. You feel like you've sort of purged it. If you scream and yell about it and a bunch of other people come up and go, "You know what? I got beat up by my dad, too. And, fuckin'-A!" and you all scream together, it's a totally different feeling...much, much larger. It just makes the experience so much more passionate and rewarding and personal.

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