Lament for the Numb 
That's one of the Catholic songs. Basically it became apparent to me that I had experienced a whole lot of things and hadn't really experienced them. From hiding behind mum's apron strings to being half-cut through something gigantically important. I always felt that I had been disenfranchised from an experience, so it's a song just lamenting that. Living but not living. Not really experiencing anything with any sort of depth.

Falling Off A Log
That's the extreme Catholic one. I had a couple of dreams - literally the best dream I ever had and a few weeks later the worst dream I ever had. So I literally just put that down on paper. There's a line in the song 'pushing the boundaries of dread' - so it's like pushing the boundaries of experience and being startled by it in a violent sort of way. Once you've got that handle on it, it's pretty self evident. It's a great song to play live; there's a sense of urgency and panic about it.

Belle of the Ball  
Probably one of the older ones. I had it for a while and it wasn't completely there... the last thing I wanted was another sweet one. Some songs refuse to be born until they are good and ready - 'Belle of the Ball' was one. It was a big ask - I wanted something elegant and poetic but sinewy and tough - something schmaltzy but deep! It was well and truly written by the time I got to the old Steinway at Sunset Sound Factory. It finally ended up on the tape the right way - had I done it earlier, it would have been too sweet. Now it's got a mixture of loss as well as a love song aspect. As soon as I started with the guys over there [Los Angeles], it just dovetailed. Then Mitchell put another piano on the one I had played - he sort of tracked what I had played and threw in a few flourishes. It was like The Fabulous Baker Boys.

The Expert  
I just liked the guitar riff and I had a set of lyrics. It just struck me at the time I was bumping into a bunch of people who seemed to know everything about everything and people full of advice and stuff... it's funny because a bunch of people I've run into since have said 'is that about me?'

Palace 
'Palace' started off as two pages of waffly detailed memories of the Civic Theatre in Auckland. Later in my quaky digs behind the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, vodka and Macintosh combined to trim the fat and it became a 12 line poem. It was just a great exercise to go through and distill it down. I wanted a song with as few notes as possible or one through the whole thing, so as not to detract from the evocative nature of the lyric and presto! There's actually about three or four notes, it worked out really well. I'll have to become part of the 'save the Civic' movement.

Bring the House Down
That was a song about a friend who I won't mention. It's just like, 'Come On, get real, don't be phony.' There's a bit of introversion in that song as well. I just loved the groove. It's got holes all over it. It really suits the lyric.

Buried in the Backyard  
That was a spur-of-the-moment song. I was getting ready for this guitar sound on Don't Hold Your Breath and I was jamming around with the riff to Buried in the Backyard. Mitchell said "What's that?". He was impressed by the darkness of what I was playing. So we decided that we'd do that one next. I took pen to paper and within a carrot juice break a new beast was born. At the time Princess Di was being raked through the coals of tabloid TV and I thought maybe someone will shoot her. It occurred to me that people are fed bad news because they are addicted to it. Angels in Armchairs! The combination of songs for an album only comes together while you're working on it - and it is a supreme buzz to write one on the spot and have it work immediately. This was the case with "Buried in the Backyard".

Maybe the Rain 
Just before the Gulf War, the Americans decided to pull out all their nerve gas from Germany and truck it through Europe and then ship it across to Johnson Atoll. I thought that was an exercise in complete fascism. 'How dare you' on one hand. On the other hand, I can't do anything about it. If they are going to treat the Pacific like a toilet, they are going to carry on doing it.

Belltower  
I've always been keen not to have the process of writing become habitual, so I like to approach it laterally - sometimes on a beer coaster and the whole thing will come together as was the case with "Belltower". Written at Topolino's at St Kilda (Melbourne) at three in the morning over a small pizza and a glass of cognac after working on Grant McLennan's stuff in the studio. I sat down and decided I would write twelve lines and try and rhyme them . I just had a discipline of metre that I wanted to stick to and I had this idea of a monument of some sort. I sat down and wrote it literally on the beer coaster and ran out of there with the whole thing in my head, and as soon as I picked up the guitar, it was all there.

Love Over All 
That's 'I love you, you b--. I've drunk myself into a stupor, the dog's dead and I love you, you b--.' That's a bit of an attack song...

Don't Hold Your Breath  
Well, I've got to write this sort of song. But how do I do it? How can I be compassionate and on the other hand say it another way? It gets kind of preachy and cornball. You listen to a Sting record or anything like that, it's like, 'Get off my back...'