Joshua: I actually made most of the songs on Easier a year and a half ago. They've sort of been stuck on a hard drive because of certain situations in my life. There have been a lot of shifts in my world lately that have finally allowed me to put them out.

Funnily enough, I wrote four of the nine songs in a three-day period in Nashville. On a Monday, I wrote "Blue," on that Tuesday, I wrote "Dancing on the Edge," and on that Wednesday, I wrote "Hold Me" and "Selfish Love."

I came back to Nashville a few months later and wrote "Easier," "I Still Care," and "No One Loves Like You" in another three days. There's something about Nashville! I gotta get back out there.

As I wrote these songs, "Blue," "Dancing on the Edge," "Hold Me," "Selfish Love" — not only is that the order I wrote them, it's also the order they are on the album. There's a chronological order to the story, and as I continued to write songs, the storyline unfolded.

There's a whole other batch of songs that I felt didn't fit on this project, but that doesn't mean they don't have a place in the future.

Joshua: I love "Easier" so much. I feel like it captures a lot of the sentiment and the lyrical ideas of the album — that question of, is it easier to love somebody else? It could also be the flip side: Our love is easier than maybe a previous relationship.

If you listen to the album start to finish, it tells a complete story. 

"Blue" is about falling in love. "Dancing on the Edge" is, are we gonna make it? "Hold Me" is, we're not gonna make it. "Selfish Love" is, it's my fault. "Clouds" is, I'm in that bad spot again. "I Still Care" is, I see you've moved on. "Easier" is, I bet he's better for you than I am. "Ruined" is, you've ruined every other lover. "No One Loves Like You" essentially encapsulates the whole thing.

All that to say, I feel like that storyline is perfectly summed up by "Easier."

Joshua: Thank you. I had just started seeing someone when I had to go on tour for The Golden Years. It was the very beginning of us falling in love, if you will. It's very hard to have a relationship when you're on tour, let alone start one. I basically had to tell her, "Let's stay in touch. But I don't know what I can commit to right now."

She came out to visit me, and it was amazing, and we had a great time together. But then she also had to go across the world for a few weeks, and we just kept missing each other. That's why there's a line in the song: "Florence, missed calls every morning," because the time difference was so crazy. 

"Dancing on the Edge" is playing with the idea that I don't want to get my hopes up. It's that question of the in-between. There's an exciting crush and hope, but also not being able to guarantee that it's going to work out.

Joshua: Totally. I feel like creativity really flows here, just because the city's always moving. I think creativity flows when you are also moving. I'll be recording ideas on a walk or while I'm on a Citi Bike.

There are still times when New York can be so overwhelming, especially in touristy areas. But in general, I feel like I've gotten immune to the chaos of the city. 

When the Knicks won, I remember walking down the street, and people were breaking bottles, and everyone was screaming — and it didn't faze me at all. I was thinking, "Dude, me a year ago, when I just got back to New York, would've been freaking the fuck out right now." I literally was just walking around, and no part of me was stressed or overwhelmed. It was just life. 

When I have friends visit, it's funny just watching them experience New York and, like, not knowing how to cross the street properly.

Joshua: There's a line in Rookie that says, "Pain has a funny way of convincing you it will last forever." When it comes to panic or a lot of those emotions, we forget that we were just doing okay. We forget that this is gonna pass.

The more trips around the sun you have, and the more you go through that panic and those emotions, the more you learn: You're gonna get through it. You just have to relax.

There are times where, yeah, I'll feel a lot of heavy emotion, and I'll start crashing out. But, usually within a few minutes, I'll be like, "I'm okay. I don't know what the fuck I'm freaking out for." I think I've gotten better at that, but there's always room to grow.

Joshua: In "Blue," I did the entire thing as a double vocal and panned the vocals. I really like how that sounded because it gives it a different feeling. One vocal down the middle feels very "in-your-face." The two vocals on each side create a different effect and a more relaxed feel.

I'm pretty sure every single song on the album has that double vocal effect. I didn't try to make them match perfectly. I allowed them to be a little bit out of sync, so you can kind of feel that there are two vocals going on at once. So I found a different sound for myself on this album.

Joshua: I feel like I've returned a little bit more to the singer-songwriter vibe. I think Golden Years was going a bit more pop, and this album feels much more authentic to me as an artist. But I don't know that it's a conscious choice. I just show up at the studio and try to make the best music I can.

I feel like over the last couple of years, I've been more authentic with myself. The more authentic I am with myself and the people around me, the more authentic my music is. So it's not necessarily that one is better or worse. To me, it's a question of more authentic or less authentic, you know?

Joshua: Totally. It's interesting — I think all four of those songs that I made in those same three days are in the key of D. I started tuning my guitar to open D to switch it up a little bit, because you can get stuck playing the same chords and get in a loop. When I changed to open D, it opened up a different world, and the songs just flowed out. 

The way I operate in a room is I'll start playing a guitar part, hit record for a voice memo, and improvise, like, 80% of the song in a few minutes. That's just the way it works for me. A lot of times, artists have these spurts of flow-state moments, where you can go three hours without anything, and then all of a sudden you write an entire verse in two minutes. My practice is: How do you stretch out and keep tapping into that flow state for as long as possible?

I worked on almost every song with Nate Miles. He's so good at knowing when to just hit record when I'm not paying attention. I'll be sitting at the piano, and he'll just toss me headphones, and then I'll be walking around trying to finish the verse. I'll go to a synth, start experimenting, and just kind of throw it in.

We got into this synergy, and that's how we were able to make those songs in just a few days — and what you hear is pretty much the day-of demo. We just got rid of all the resistance and all the barriers between artist and art.

I also worked with a lot of different musicians who are a lot more talented than I am and have more diversity in what they're able to play. As an artist, I think ego is the killer. You have to know your strengths and weaknesses. I give a lot of credit to the other people on this album for a lot of the musicianship that you hear.

I'm my happiest self when I'm in the studio. I feel free.

Joshua: If somebody comes up to me on the street and says that Rookie changed their life, I just start sobbing, like, instantly. I don't know what it is about people resonating with Rookie that just makes me sob.

I think the ultimate goal of an artist is to have an impact on somebody's life. To me, anytime somebody benefits from Rookie, it redeems a lot of the pain that I went through and all the struggle in creating it as well.

It's been truly awesome, and I think it's just the beginning. That's the cool thing about books: They have such a long life.

It's cool to continue to see the ripple effects of people finding it and reaching out and saying that it gave them words for things they never knew how to say, or that it's the first time they haven't felt alone in certain areas, or they didn't realize that someone else had been through that.

I mean, what better reward is there as an artist?

Easier is available now on all streaming platforms.

Keep up with Joshua on Instagram, and check out Rookie, available now.

Note: This interview was edited for length and clarity.