Naturally, such acclaim brought with it a tide of press attention. Not all of it was welcome. The role of much of the music press was, and still is, to render bands familiar and comprehensible, uncovering the reasoning that can condense the beautiful and bizarre into an action or thought process. The band were insistent on the fact that their music couldn’t be unpackaged in this way. “I don’t know why I write songs,” Birgisson explained to UK newspaper The Times in 2000. “I don’t know where it comes from and I don’t know why we four are really good at doing it. It happens unconsciously, but
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