"This is from Laughing Stock, I wanted to choose something from this, Sprit of Eden or Mark Hollis’s solo record, which I love. Chris Taylor loves those records and when we were doing Shields I got really obsessed with them. I didn’t hear Talk Talk until after we made Veckatimest, maybe it was because ‘80s reference points weren’t fashionable when I was growing up. There’s something in the silence and space in this music that feels like it’s not made by a person, it feels like the record made itself. I guess that was their process, players would come in and do whatever they wanted them to do and then they took a piece of it and arranged things around it. I’ve always wished I could have been in the room when these records were made, just to see what kind of conversations were happening, if it was actually just a brutal process that they really didn’t enjoy to go through making them. There’s certain chord progressions on Laughing Stock and Spirit of Eden where you feel you just couldn’t write them, they sound like they emerged from nature, grew out of themselves and are eating themselves at the same time. With ‘Myrrhman’ especially there’s this weird turning chord progression that starts in the middle of the song, it never releases and it doesn’t let go, it’s moving around itself and imploding, with that quality of using space and silence as an instrument. “It feels like something that no one person could play, it’s like a mystery. The more you make music you try to channel whatever that mystery is, where you don’t know where something came from or how it happened, it’s something that’s totally human but comes from nowhere and you don’t know why and these records do that so well. The more we do this the more I realise that whilst making music and listening to music isn’t the same thing, it’s not really that different. Learning to be good at making music involves wanting to hear what’s going on as if you’re a passive listener, rather than ‘I want to do this and I want you to like it.’ It’s not about trying to make someone like what you’re doing, it’s channelling whatever that Gestalt thinking is that allows these things to happen. This was a real touchstone going into Shields, not so much for Painted Ruins, but it’s still something I always want to get back to, because it’s a trance-like state that feels like it came from no one, it just came out of the ether."

"This was an EP. They're also from Grantham. Actually the the singer Wakey, he came to the Coventry gig on the tour last year. It was fucking incredible, and he was fucking pissed as well. Him and his wife were pissed out their heads. They live on a narrowboat and apparently that night they went home and both of them fell in the river. I want to get him on a record. I meant to but I'm quite selfish and I forget. But I thought he was a great singer. He did this EP and an album, called Attack Of The Porky Men. I bought that on CD and it cost me £30, an import from America, because it's not on CD really, I think someone just burned it. I didn't start listening to English Dogs until about 2006. I liked trawling through old punk stuff on YouTube. Discharge, GBH, Exploited: stuff I wouldn't have listened to as a kid even though I was never an English Dogs fan. And then I came across that EP and I thought it was brilliant. You can tell it's a Grantham accent. That was brilliant, mind blowing almost. And also the lyrics were just crap, ""Psychokiller rah rah rah..."" It's just rubbish. He's got this diluted Lydon-esque approach, but that's what I love about it. A lot of that new wave punk, around the 80s, it's all crap isn't it. It kind of reminds me of Roachee, it's all crap. People like them are similar in my eyes. So it was a really big honour when he came backstage. He was off his nut. He had a can of cider in his pocket and he came in and was talking to me and looking at all the beer on the side. I said he should just take it. He was like, ""You're joking, can I?"" And was putting all this beer in his pockets, him and his missus, ""Right, mate, mate, I'm going alright."" And the thing is, he knows. He knows. He said, ""When you went out there and you just looked at the crowd and went 'FUCK OFF' this is what I'm going doing, you know, don't you, you know."" Even though, on the hierarchy of punk he's like, down here, he believes in it and he can identify that kind of spirit. And I thought that was really quite touching. I've got his number, I should text him."

"It's like with David Bowie - there was a bit of me that didn't want to include The Smiths because of comparisons, but I couldn't not. The Smiths were a very important band to me when I was 15, 16. It was perfect timing. In the 80s, when The Smiths were still around, I was the right age for what he was singing about to be relevant to me. I was going through adolescence so the resonance was even stronger. So yes, The Queen Is Dead. Did I choose it because it's my favourite Smiths album or because it's recognised as being the best? There's probably a bit of both in there. It's funny actually, looking back on it there are so many great Smiths songs, but there's so much on singles and B-sides that weren't on the albums, which was definitely an influence on how we did things with Suede. I remember when this first came out it was such an exciting thing. I remember hearing 'Bigmouth Strikes Again' on the radio and thinking, 'Wow'. It was a real fan moment. I remember queuing up at Rounder Records in Burgess Hill, and then playing it, and going through the lyrics. 'Cemetry Gates' was the song that I loved the most at the time, back in 1986. I thought the wordplay was amazing. Obviously Morrissey is known as a great lyricist but I think he's probably the greatest lyricist. I don't think Dylan is in the same league, with his songs about the 'Jack of Hearts' and things like that. Some of his lyrics are great, but they're not as powerful as Morrissey's. He had a brilliantly balanced dance between the wit and darkness. It was never too comical; well, apart from 'Frankly, Mr Shankly'. You know what I mean - it was this amazing tightrope walk of being slightly ridiculous but incredibly engaging and incredibly serious. And Johnny Marr's guitar playing is amazing. He's one of the greatest ever. Incredible melodies and the craftsmanship of his guitar playing without it ever sounding boring. It never got into Steve Vai territory. It was always tasteful without ever being dull. In the context of the time when musically everything was so cheap-sounding, The Smiths were making - for want of a better word - really organic-sounding music, but it was still very exciting and strangely quite ground-breaking. They were a really inspiring band for so many people, and for a couple of years they were the greatest, they really were."