For the cover story of the December issue of Relix Magazine, The Shins’ James Mercer stopped by the Relix offices in New York City to chat about the iconic now-shuttered Lower Manhattan venue, Wetlands and his newest efforts with his project with Danger Mouse, Broken Bells.

The duo’s new project, Into the Blue, was released in October, a busy time for both the artist’s other projects. Danger Mouse’s album with Black Thought Cheat Codes dropped just two months prior, and The Shins’ tour celebrating the 20th anniversary of their genre-defining 2001 debut, Oh, Inverted World, was in motion.

In the interview, Mercer reflected on the night The Shins released Oh, Inverted World; they performed in the lounge at New York’s famed Wetlands on a bill with The Gourds, while The Dirty Dozen Brass Band appeared upstairs. “That was a great time—it was this new, exciting moment,” Mercer says of that booking. “It’s interesting because, looking back on that stuff, I was just so ignorant. I really didn’t know anything about what it would be like to be signed to a record label or anything.”

He went on to add, “It was just a very different period of time in my life, and it’s strange because I think back and I’m like, ‘There’s some really good, strong ideas on that record.’ I feel proud that the work holds up, but that period of time was also this dark phase for me. So it was interesting to look back with 20 years of perspective.”

Mercer also saw the parallels between those early forays into songwriting and his recent work with Burton.

“There’s a piece of that lyrically on this new Bells record,” he says. “This record, to me, is dark. It’s sad, lyrically. There’s a lot of loneliness in it, tinges of regret and so on. I remember having a couple of passages that I had written for one of the songs and Brian was like, ‘That’s too dark, dude.’ So he was good at tempering that bias that I have, though I was still able to express some of that.”

Burton echoes his bandmate’s thoughts. “There’s a lot of heavy stuff on this record and it is meaningful, but I do hope that there’s enough room for people to take what they will and use it themselves,” he says. “I don’t want people thinking of me and James when they’re listening to the music. If I was 22, then I would be like, ‘me, me, me,’ but the older and better you get, the more you have to move out of the way and not focus on yourself or the personality of what’s behind the music. It’s not as important anymore.”

Looking ahead, Mercer and Burton already have plans to regroup in January for their next writing session. While it remains to be seen if they will continue to add samples into the mix or try another approach, Mercer is excited to follow Burton down the wormhole.

Read the full cover story on Broken Bells here.