Joan of Arc vary the way they write and compose albums more deliberately than most bands. They work in ways that are personally convenient and compelling at the moment. Although 'Boo Human,' the band's tenth LP, was written by Tim Kinsella and 14 musicians, it stands out as a work of autobiography. "Boo Human is very different," Kinsella tells Spinner. "It's just me -- it's what was happening."

After writing guitar and vocal parts, Kinsella booked a week in a studio and invited his friends including members of Wilco, Iron and Wine, and Prefuse 73 to come play. Often within hours, the collaborators wrote parts, arranged and recorded the song. "It was like a chemical process," Kinsella explains. "I tried to take a sort of poisonous era of my life and make something. There are records in my life I go back to when I need them. Someone else will have this record if they want that, if they find comfort in other people's distress."

'Boo Human' is not a singularly distressing album; from beginning to end the songs tell a story of the thoughts that document lost-love and what happens next. There's a quality of stupor in the opening track, 'Shown and Told,' when Kinsella sings, " You're numb and you're numb/and you know that you're numb." There is sweet lament in 'Laughter Reflected Back': "Best thing I ever had/worst thing that ever happened to me." And there's some serious pining in 'Tell-tale Penis': "I'm barely living in her half time show/Keeping warped minutes of her wishes and revisions"

In his earlier and what Kinsella believes, more politically-motivated music, Kinsella is less precise. His haters hate him largely because his lyrics level serious accusations, but doesn't really back them. His cerebral jokes and music with vocal parts occasionally sound like a tantrum. But Kinsella considers that he implies political ideas and the listener puts them together. "I don't want to impose anything on anyone," he says. What then was he thinking when he named the fourth song on the album '9/11 2?' "It's just a joke in bad taste, really."