"Greg Sage had a lot of great records right around this period but this one to me is the peak. It's extremely dark music and it's sort of hardcore but it's also undeniable pop songs. I remember driving around Austin with some of my hardcore friends from Temple and they were really into The Misfits, The Dead Kennedys. They weren't into my silly pop music, let me just put it that way. They were not Julian Cope fans. They put this record on they were like 'this is too gloomy. It's creeping me out.' It's a record that has classic song after classic song. At one point I covered 'No One Wants an Alien' just on my four track. I used to cover songs a lot just as an exercise because it was fun and to figure out how songs were put together. It was my process for figuring out how to become a recording artist. "

"This was my grandfather’s first cinematic gift to me. He was a filmmaker who made commercials in Italy in the sixties, seventies, and eighties, and he loved Visconti, who was always his favorite. So he would make me watch films regularly, and this was one of the few that could have felt like homework but didn’t. I love where the film comes from, in terms of the evolution of Visconti’s career. I like that he started off making this pretty dogmatic neorealism and then went on to make this operatic film. The difference between the two approaches is a really beautiful manifestation of his ability to grow as an artist and also to just do multiple things. His cinematic language changed based on the people who populated his frames, and this movie feels grand because it’s got cinema royalty in it, like Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, and Claudia Cardinale. The frame feels like it’s the right size and scope and weight for people of that stature."

"I remember first listening to this during the OK Computer tour, too, with Colin [Greenwood]. The only thing I'd really known by him before – Bill, I mean, not Colin,– was 'Lovely Day'. When I'd got into him, he'd retired from the music industry, but years later, a documentary, Still Bill, came out about why he'd done that, and I'd really encourage any fan of his to get hold of it. He's just this lovely family man, doing joinery, talking about how he doesn't want to make music for the sake of it in this really lovely, gentle way. 

There's a wisdom in his personality, too, a wisdom really comes out in his singing voice, and his music. He doesn't come across as an artist driven by the need to express himself creatively either, which is interesting. He comes across as a human being, a husband and a father before he's a musician. He talks about why that's important, and that really resonated with that way of thinking.
"

"As much as it seems like it's a go-to song if you're into someone and you want to show your affection, “Sign Your Name” is actually from my mum. She's a huge fan of Terence Trent D'Arby, to the point of sending him fan letters and stuff when he first started out. “I grew up listening to the first album, Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D'Arby, and he was the first artist I saw play live, at the Guildhall in Southampton. I was at the front and I was like ‘Who is this guy? He's got this Marvin Gaye vibe, but there's Prince there, and Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder in the vocal.’ “This was his big hit. Lyrically it said so much, it was a very poetic and eloquent way of saying ‘Let's cherish this love I have for you.’ It was a really nice way of approaching it, and it was a good way to learn how to write my own songs."