The musical group:
- The mock interview in "An Attempt to Tip the Scales", where Conor Oberst is hilariously impersonated by Todd Fink, lead singer of The Faint. It's meant to poke fun at the dark tone of the album and Oberst's persona.
- Oberst: Well, I did have a brother who died in a bathtub... drowned. Actually, I had five brothers that died that way.
Interviewer: (laughs)
Oberst: No, I'm serious. My mother drowned one every year for five consecutive years. They were all named Padraic, so, they all got one song. It's kind of like walking out the door to discover it's a window.
- The Left the Background Music On moment in the same mock interview: The proper song part of "An Attempt To Tip The Scales" ends with a short ambient loop that keeps running in the background of the interview portion... Then "Conor" casually asks his interviewer "Can you make that sound stop, please?", and he does. It's particularly funny because at this point, the background droning had already been going on for so long that the listener may well have tuned it out and forgotten it was there entirely until it stopped.
- From "Landlocked Blues":There's kids playing guns in the street
And one pointed his tree branch at me
I put my hands up, said "Enough is enough,"
"If you walk away I'll walk away"
And then he shot me dead! - In the instrumental break of "Train Under Water," Oberst tells the band "Make me cry!"
