"your hero"

Pitchfork: There's a lot of self-awareness to the music. Do you consider yourself an introspective or self-critical person?

James Murphy: I don't know that I'm introspective or self-critical. But…

Pat Mahoney: Self-obsessed.

JM: Self-obsessed, yeah. Really suck the air out of a room! We're talking about me, right?

More just like, there's a lot of erasure-- and I don't mean the band-- with how we all talk to each other, where everything's kind of balanced. In other words, there's nothing wrong with being a piece of shit or being stupid. So it's not self-deprecating in my mind to say that I'm stupid or a piece of shit because there's no judgment. It just seems normal to me because that's how we all talk to one another.

Pitchfork: But there's some analysis in there too. Are you the kind of person that spends a lot of time thinking about social interaction?

JM: Yes. Yes, I spend a lot of time thinking about social interaction. A ton of it. Always have. I find it endlessly fascinating and gross and awesome.