I'm not being particularly hard on Richie. I'm saying the creative juices seem (to me) to have died to a great extent after Lost Highway. It's no secret at all that I find little to like in The Circle or WAN. The Circle is the album Richie is, on paper, most involved in, but it seems Jon and Richie had little of substance to say together. I mean when they have to write about politics and newspaper stories and generic topics that mean nothing.... they're not really saying anything of substance that binds them as soul mates. They are just painting by numbers. They're not feeling it and neither were we for the most part.

Do you get what I'm saying? I'd rather have THINFS with personal lyrics that speak to me than another bland, meaningless album that I won't touch after a month.