'By the Way, I Forgive You' is not an album about forgiveness in the easy sense - where someone has hurt you and then suddenly there's a great reconciliation and a remorse-filled scene with two people running across the golden wheat field towards an embrace that somehow undoes a lifetime of pain and damage, as if the past has no meaning. It's about radical acceptance (not to be confused with complacency) and unconditional love. The songs alone aren't universal messages, they are personal stories of our parents and childhood, our divorces, oppressive religion, the fact that marriage is hard and having children is f***ing terrifying, even the sting of death. It is the story of forgiveness, that despite all this keeps us innocently climbing out of bed every morning open to love-big terrible trembling love.