Got Milk?

Imagery of this sort is par for the course with Mangum, whose lyrics are potent, poetic and darkly surreal. "There's a new song called 'Two-Headed Boy,' about a two-headed boy who makes a magic radio for his girlfriend, but then she breaks it," he discloses. "It's also about the end of the world, and he's in a jar, and you can't really tell if he's on display or real or not. But it's also kind of like his dreams. At the end, everything he's ever wanted is in these packages under a Christmas tree in the snow."

Another new song, "Up and Over," which Mangum calls "that song about love for Jesus," has elicited a great deal of comment among those who've heard it. "People have asked me more about that song than any other song," he says incredulously. "Any time you sing about God, people are not going to know if you are being totally serious, which is going to freak them out, or whether you're being sarcastic, which is going to freak them out, too. And I'm not into being sarcastic. But I'm not into being preachy, either. I'm into Jesus, but I'm also into the Buddha and the Tao." His interest in such topics dates back to his Ruston days, when he was a choirboy at an Episcopal church. "I used to go to this camp where we would all sit around and weep for each other and sing songs about Jesus and tell jokes about shaggy monkeys and talk about all the drugs we'd done and smoke cigarettes and listen to Cat Stevens and stay up for 48 hours and hug each other when we left."

In a way, this vignette is reminiscent of life at Pet Sounds, where Mangum has been worshiping at the altar of sound with religious fervor. "It's hard for me to think of more than one thing at a time," he admits. "Like, the artwork for the album isn't even together, and I keep meaning to go to the library to figure it out. And I haven't called my mother in two months. But I'm just thinking about that one song that doesn't have that one little twist it needs. That's all I can think about.