"My favourite song is 'Farewell, Farewell' which is this beautiful arrangement, awesome songwriting and then Sandy Denny's voice is just so haunting. But that album is masterfully arranged, masterfully recorded and I love the drum sounds. We were always trying to get the drum sounds to be more Fairport - it's so economical but really funky at the same time and they just have a lot of crazy meters that you don't even notice are shifting from 7/8 to 4/4 because it's carried by these strong folk song lyrics and melodies. But that was a big touchstone for us, especially some of the fiddle style parts. I think Richard Thompson is one of the coolest guitarists out there and there's a Richard & Linda Thompson album, I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight, the title song of which is featured on this HBO show [Enlightened]. I thought. ""Is this a Liz Phair song from 1993, what is this?"" and then you discover it and think this song's fucking awesome. Her voice is definitely not as good as Sandy Denny's but it's probably more suited for that kind of 70s pop rock. But there's also this really great song on that album called 'The Calvary Cross', which could be a Lungfish song. He's just a dude who was way ahead of his time and more interesting than someone like Jimmy Page, who's been played to death and is such a rip-off artist!"

"My Dad also turned me onto The Stooges and their record Fun House. “Down on the Street” was another one of those songs that had me mouth agape, drooling and not knowing what I was listening to exactly. It was like sound effects. He was making a sound from that guitar - that reverb on that riff is the sweetest reverb in Rock and Roll history - and Iggy is singing through an amp which is all fucked up and distorted. “Down on the Street” is something that’s strange and I like it that way. It’s not something I analyse or geek out on, it makes you feel a certain way and makes everything tougher and cooler. Talk about swagger, that song is the epitome of swagger. It’s like performance art. My Dad turned me onto them but listening to bands like The Damned and Nirvana led me back to them. I’m always coming back to that record, it’s so raw and so punk, it’s a masterpiece. Fun House is fucking incredible, song after song too. It’s unrelenting until the end, finally, you get a nice long jam. I’ve always been interested in whatever Iggy does. He’s one of those real freaks, he’s a true, true artist, who feels his way through life and I like that. It’s one of those things, but I wish I was in that band. I would have loved to have been in that band!"

"I first heard Nirvana probably when I was 11 or 12. There was an older kid in my neighbourhood who used to listen to them on a boom box on the back of his BMX, but I didn't know what it was. I remember it sounding like a car crash, like nothing I'd ever heard before, so violent and aggressive. Also this kid was pretty cool, he had a chopper bike and a jean jacket, he might even have had one tattoo. I just remember thinking 'he's a badass', while I was on my neon bike and wearing shorts. I didn't stand a chance. I never spoke to him, I just asked his little brother what it was, and then later I was in a record store with my mum and we saw Nirvana Unplugged…, and I said 'I love this band!'. I think she was so shocked that I had said I loved anything at all that she bought the album on cassette and it was what we listened to on the school run. It was then I first started truly caring about delivery, I'm less bothered about the actual songs. I'm interested in art, I consider myself an artist more than a musician because I can't actually play an instrument. I nearly chose Bleach because that's catharsis on tape, but everything about Nevermind is iconic, it's got everything you could want from Nirvana."

"Queen Of Denmark and the Irrepressibles album were kind of jointly on my CD player in the car and I played them both endlessly. I love John's voice and I absolutely love Jamie [McDermott, Irrepressibles founder]'s voice as well - they're completely different voices but both extremely natural. Some people I play The Irrepressibles to, they thought it sounded like Antony, but I didn't get that. Whereas John has a more masculine appeal and nowness that has been embraced by the gay community of bears and beards. His stories are of woe tinged with a sardonic sense of humour, which is one of the most important things about his songwriting, whereas Jamie has an extravagant vision - extravagance on a shoestring, I don't know how he does it - but lovely orchestral instrumentation and absolutely beautiful vocals. I went to see the Mirror Mirror show at the Barbican and it was amazing and it should've been written about and applauded by the likes of The Guardian and that, but for some reason Jamie still continues to do lovely work but it just doesn't get the press and the support from the music industry that John has had. John is great and deserving of it - this album's brilliant, as is Pale Green Ghosts, but I would especially like people to listen to that Irrepressibles album, because he's a great artist and a hidden gem amongst the whole 21st century queer landscape."

"I somehow remember hearing the first Human League album that has 'Being Boiled' on it, and just being amazed at how strange it was. Then when they started Heaven 17 it was the most odd, phenomenal pop music. At times it seemed as if they were choosing to be really poppy and commercial, and they were really good at it, and other times of their own free will and volition, they were trying to be like mutant pop stars. Then the BEF, and I feel old dating myself like this, it first came out as a cassette and it was very rare for an artist to release an album on cassette. There was one song on there, I think it's called 'The Decline Of The West' and it still stands as one of the most beautiful pieces of music I've ever heard. That particular instrumental somehow wormed itself into my DNA. There are certain songs like that, 'Heroes' by David Bowie, 'Atmosphere' by Joy Division, I remember as a young 15-year-old musician thinking to myself 'all I want to do is aspire to make music that's 50% as good as this'. It seemed utterly absurd to try and make music as good as this, because that would be impossible, but I thought it might be a realistic challenge to make music half as good. Thank you for asking me to do this. Now I'm going to go and listen to all these records."

"This was another sonic influence on the record - the saxophone, the guitar. If you’re painting a picture it’s like 'What colours do you want?' Every instrument is a colour and with this we’re only using a few different colours. It's in how it sounds and how it feels to listen to, it's not necessarily about the actual instruments, it's about what it visually feels like. “Yoko’s record was produced by Phil Spector and on Oh My God the subject matter is a little absurd and it's fun to be sort of playful with it. Back to the cinematic thing, it exists in this big, bombastic universe and mimics the Phil Spector sound. “I just read the Jeff Tweedy book and I really related to him saying that basically his whole life and everything he does is essentially influenced by two different records. One's a record of just train sounds like cabooses, it's not music, it's just train sounds. The other one, I forgot, I think it's Johnny Cash or something. ""Yoko used the heartbeat of her unborn baby on a song she made with John Lennon and I really relate to that; I'm really into the atmosphere of songs and how everything in the world can be its own music. I saw a quote from Neko Case recently where she said 'When you're an artist and work for yourself, your job never ends!"