It's great that you can still surprise fans.

For ourselves, as well, to keep it fresh and new is so important for us. Otherwise we just sort of get bored.

Twelve records in, what is a constant in the studio for you guys and what was different this time around?

The spirit of the band is pretty much consistent. Egos are checked in at the door, we just want to make to make some great music together and we're all willing to do whatever is necessary to get there. Sometimes it means really means taking a back seat somehow, or allowing someone else in the band to offer up suggestions, really throw it open to the floor. Everybody did that, no one was being precious with what they do.

The biggest difference [this time], I suppose, was the starting out point for this record. We really didn't have a clear agenda as far as a release date or a particular feel for what this album would be. We had some clues, and we had one idea which was to go in and work some songs and music with Brian Eno and Danny Lanois as co-writers. We went to Fez in Morocco for two weeks to just work on music, it was like a sort of musical composition workshop.

We all got in a room together and I brought a few of my ideas in but most of the ideas would have been generated there and then. Some of the songs on the album -- "Unknown Caller," "Moment of Surrender" -- would have been songs that came together pretty much in the space of a couple of hours and therefore probably were played in the final incarnation maybe once or twice. There's a real feel -- which you don't often get - [that] everyone is totally present, nobody is just playing their part. Suddenly something great is occurring in the room. There's a real electricity to the performance and I think I can really hear it.

I guess you could say those are two of the "bigger" songs on the record and you really get to stretch your legs as a band. I would have thought the opposite, that they would have taken longer than some of the other songs on the album.

The songs that have the kind emotional weight and gravitas were the ones that almost came quickly and easily. What we wanted to try and do was balance out the album and find some songs with a bit more life force, a bit more for want of a better word, joy. And those were the ones that took a while. "Standup Comedy" took a while, so did "Get on your Boots" and "Crazy Tonight." "White of Snow," "Moment of Surrender," "Unknown Caller" were actually very quick.

The other song that came very quickly was "No Line on the Horizon." That's a song that we only ended up playing once. It's such a simple idea, a way of using a particular guitar sound that I hit on and sort of experimenting with guitar tone and the song came out of that. It was very instant, very quick. It's very rough, I think in a good way.

Our records are funny, we take a long time to make them but really we're always in search of inspiration. It's not a methodical approach, we don't have pattern of recording that we stick to. We can go for a while not really seeming to make much progress then suddenly a song will really take a huge leap forward for one reason or another, particularly towards the end of this album.

In the last 48 hours, I think seven mixes were completed and two vocals were sung. There's this huge ground rush that suddenly occurred on this project, we got it finished. I use the analogy of the Tibetan monks who do the calligraphy; it's all about mixing the paints first and that process takes a long time.