Despite the rampant goofiness and overall loose grip on factuality, the interview contains some useful information and a handful of entertaining quotes. Conrad Keely may not be the most serious of interview subjects, but he's rarely dull.

Splendid: What were your thoughts when going in to record the new album?

Conrad Keely: I thought, "We should make an album with songs, and some lyrics, and it would be nice to play our instruments on it as a bonus."

Splendid: What did you want to build on from your previous work, and what did you want to add?

Conrad Keely: It's usually the same thought -- wanting to create a perfect work. You never actually achieve your highest ideal, but by falling short of it you achieve something close. I still don't think we've achieved our vision of the "perfect album", but hopefully striving for that goal will force us to continue to progress...or it could kill us.

Splendid: How has moving to a major label affected your ability to get the sounds you want down on the record? Does it give you increased flexibility, due to the greater resources available, or does it limit you in terms of what the label wants to hear?

Conrad Keely: For this album, a team of Interscope writers actually sat down with us and we described the types of songs we like to play. They came back a week later with all the tracks for the record completely written and scored, and we just had to record it. They even have a recording team at Interscope who will do that for you, but we weren't going to take it that far! No way, we're true to our roots, yo.

Splendid: Did the songs come individually, or was there an attempt to carve out time and write a bunch of songs together? They seem to have a certain coherence of sound, though they all sound different.

Conrad Keely: We've always approached our songs on an individual basis; some were written right before recording, some had been developing for years. For instance, "How Near How Far" was begun four years ago, and "Relative Ways" was written just before we went in to the studio.

Splendid: "Relative Ways" seems to me to be a sister song to Madonna's "Mark David Chapman". Agree, disagree? Do you find yourselves coming back to ideas from earlier songs when pushing your sound forward?

Conrad Keely: Well, they were written by two different band members, but we like the associations that people make when listening to our music, whether they're accurate or not. They are certainly by the same band.

Splendid: Have you seen any notable shifts in the types of crowds at your shows?

Conrad Keely: They seem to have grown horns, and sport various instruments of war and torture.

Splendid: Have the hardcore, old-school fans been accepting of your swelling fanbase, or is there a sense of "fuck off, this is our band"?

Conrad Keely: All our old school fans were basically our friends, and they're still our friends, so I suppose that's a good sign.

Splendid: What kind of a reception have you found outside of the US?

Conrad Keely: Wonderful. The English are fond of bringing us teas and biscuits, the French bring us loaves of bread, and the Germans bring us the scalps of their fallen chieftains. I imagine they treat all American bands like this.

Splendid: Does your music travel well?

Conrad Keely: It doesn't like flying, but we sedate it with drugs.

Splendid: As much as I have enjoyed your previous work, Source Tags and Codes seems like a real surge forward; it's by far your strongest work to date. Did you have that feeling when you were working on it?

Conrad Keely: That was the hope, but there were obviously low points when we thought it was terrible. For me it came together all around the last week, but before that we experienced ego death and a scouring of the souls, the likes of which I've always associated with various levels of hell.

Splendid: Did the pressure of major-label debut-hood have anything to do with pushing yourselves harder?

Conrad Keely: Naturally. There was a team of Dr. Dre's people around at all time, talking furtively into their head sets and looking around nervously. When Jimmy came by, our engineers and producer would have to clear the studio -- sometimes we had to clear the studio -- and on one such occasion, a roll of tape mysteriously "disappeared". So that song, entitled "Beware the Eyes of the Industry", didn't make it on the record.

Splendid: I read once a review of a Death Cab for Cutie album that had been picked up by mistake by a thrash-metal fan, based on the band's name. Needless to say, he was less than pleased. Does your rather in-your-face moniker lead to similar problems for you guys?

Conrad Keely: We had a problem with the last album where Madonna fans were buying it (thinking she wrote a record called And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead? Go figure).

Splendid: Have you ever found yourself confronted by an audience that just really didn't get it?

Conrad Keely: Yes, we tend to kick them.

Splendid: Were any of you guys in bands before this one?

Conrad Keely: I was in an art rock thing called Benedict Gehlen, which was actually more a concept of a band, rather than an actual band.

Splendid: Any embarrassing tales of your early days?

Conrad Keely: My mother once told me when I was a baby in my crib, I peed on my own face.

Splendid: What bands have recently caught your ear?

Conrad Keely: I like this whole emo-core thing. Emo sounds so new and fresh (not!). No, I like that last Peaches record, Teaches of Peaches. I like electronic music, especially when it's mainly about fucking -- like Armand van Helden.

Splendid: A great deal of your music is based on aggressive sounds and energy; is this a product of your interactions?

Conrad Keely: Our passion has always been mistaken for aggression. We're not angry, we're just incredibly horny.

Splendid: Is there a great deal of argument In the band, or is all of that limited to the music?

Conrad Keely: We fight, we fuck, we cuddle -- we're just a regular old band in that sense. Except for Jason. I hate him.

Splendid: If you could, briefly recap the story of your coming together as a band.

Conrad Keely: It was like a blinding flash of light, if I remember, that day in Sunday school. We never really talked about it afterwards, but I swear I saw Jesus, and he was holding a guitar in one hand, and his sawed off shot-gun in the other (the church we went to always depicted Jesus holding a sawed-off shot gun). I think he said something like "band", or "bang", or "damned". I think it was "band", though. So we decided to form this band!

Splendid: What song do you wish you had written?

Conrad Keely: "Ruby Tuesday"! I wish I'd written that for my mother.

Splendid: Why?

Conrad Keely: That's what the kids called her in school, and that's the best Stones song, in my stupid opinion.

Splendid: What's your favorite song to cover?

Conrad Keely: I really like doing U2's "Electric Co."

Splendid: Do your songs come from musical ideas, or lyrical ideas first?

Conrad Keely: I sometimes have the idea for the lyrical content before the actual lyrics. Like, for "How Near How Far", I knew I wanted to write about Maxfield Parrish somehow, but I didn't know what I was going to say until right before the recording.

Splendid: Do you write as a band, or as individuals?

Conrad Keely: Both. Sometimes I will have a song done, and the band just has to learn it, and sometimes the band will help us arrange songs. Sometimes the band doesn't show up for practice, and we have to write without him.

Splendid: Do your parents like your music?

Conrad Keely: Oh, hell yeah. I had a mother who'd come home from the bar with ten people when I was in high school, wake me up, and demand I play piano for them.

Splendid: Has your success surprised them, or were they supportive from the beginning? Were there any struggles when you announced you wanted to be rock stars?

Conrad Keely: Our parents told us God told them this was what we were meant to do. Jason's dad had a little argument with God about it, and God turned his hair white and burnt the house down. Ever since then, they've supported us.

Splendid: Why do you think that so much aggressive music these days is of the rap-metal variety?

Conrad Keely: Money.

Splendid: Do you think that there's a perception now that "loud" and "thoughtful" are not adjectives that can coexist in music?

Conrad Keely: I don't know what people are perceiving now, but it doesn't affect us that much. One should never let the masses affect one's perceptions.

Splendid: What are you reading?

Conrad Keely: A Golden Age: Art and Society in Hungary 1896-1914.

Splendid: Has what you read influenced your approach to music? How?

Conrad Keely: Music and art. Music is a being with many arms, like Siva. Art is a being with many heads, like a hydra. We approach this hydra-siva thing with caution, and heavily armed, and there is a chance we may defeat it.

Splendid: Do you see yourselves as a band that will still be together in ten years?

Conrad Keely: Yes, but I don't want to over-estimate ourselves. As Bob Marley once said "take the bucket to the well every day, soon the bottom going drop out".

Splendid: Dave Grohl once said that he knew Nirvana had "made it" when Weird Al Yankovic covered one of their songs. What, to you, means that a band has "made it"?

Conrad Keely: When a chauffeur drives me up the road for coffee in the morning in a limo, I suppose.

Splendid: Have you gotten there yet, or is it still on the horizon?

Conrad Keely: I still walk and catch buses.