"I recently realised that I was leaving the Thompson Twins out of my list of influences because I subconsciously felt they were embarrassing. But I listened to a lot of Thompson Twins. Into the Gap was my favourite when I was 12 or 13. When I go back and revisit those records, some of it sounds a little dated, but actually they hold up really well. I feel like the songwriting of the Thompson Twins is one of the overlooked treasures of the 80s. It's really, really good. There are songs that tend towards the cheesy side, like 'Doctor Doctor', but if you listen to the deep songs on those records, the songwriting is fantastic. The lyrics are really, really good. That's what was on repeat when I was just starting to write songs. The ages 12 through 17 were when I felt I was completely defined by music, completely engulfed by it. You rarely saw me without a set of headphones on because I was trying to block out the rest of the world. Which is funny now – the only time nowadays I put a set of headphones on is to listen to mixes. I don't ever, ever wear an iPod. I barely even listen to music, which is no joke. But back then I was soaking up music like a sponge."

"The great British director Lindsay Anderson died 20 years ago and he only made five or six films, but they’re all very interesting, and I think his most famous is called If… It’s the film Malcolm McDowell did before A Clockwork Orange, and it’s kind of the ultimate teenage movie. It’s beautiful and very radical. It won Cannes that year, and it’s very much of its time, the ’60s, and Malcolm McDowell is brilliant in it. It’s the ultimate teen rebellion movie — and I like that genre — but it’s also very poetic, almost Brechtian, and there’s almost fantasy elements to it. Like, there’s this woman in the movie who might not even be real. It’s filmed in color and there are sections that are black-and-white and it’s kind of amazing. It’s the first film of a trilogy too. Malcolm McDowell’s character’s name is Mick Travis, and so a few years later, they did a film called O Lucky Man! and then ten years later they did Britannia Hospital together, Lindsay Anderson and Malcolm McDowell. So it’s one of the greater film trilogies in my opinion… It’s definitely worth watching. It used to be a bigger cult film in the ’70s and the ’80s, but I see it’s falling off. I don’t know if young people are watching it the way they used to."

"Me and James were obsessed with the NME ‘100 Best Albums Of All Time’ in the mid 80s, so we started buying as many as we could - Marquee Moon, Blonde On Blonde, The Clash... some of them we had anyway, but then there were things like Pet Sounds, which was really high, and when you’re 14 you think of the Beach Boys as fucking idiots going “doo wop”, don’t you? We both got What’s Going On and I think it’s the first time I realised, in an exotic way, that politics could translate. Through colour, through country - you could still feel the desperation of someone else even though it was your first exposure to music like that. Obviously my Mum and Dad had tons of records, but the intimacy of playing that in your bedroom and being transported to another world of the same anger you were feeling, but then in such a graceful way. ‘Inner City Blues’, the title track, ‘Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)’. There’s lot’s of brackets - lot’s of songs with brackets. I love that idea of brackets. I love the cover. You can still put it on today, and obviously in the studio we have lots of vinyl and a record player - you put that one in particular and it drifts, it seduces you but it also stimulates."