"I was a little shocked by this when it came out; a ferocious, spikey talent spitting out songs about fucking, TV, boys and girls. It was so abrupt and yet also so ‘every day’. I’m always impressed by writers who can bring a language into their lyrics that we aren’t used to hearing. The album is having a conversation with you. It is a self-contained world that you can walk into. Outside of the lyrics, the sound of this record was an education to me. At the time, I was listening to the most lo-fi, scratchy recordings, but this was something different. It was bone dry and brittle but also very well recorded; it made me realise I didn't have to think black and white in those terms of fidelity. It’s a record that I often think about when recording myself and it has given me a distrust of reverbs and echoes."

"""I’m just trying to do ones that really stuck with me. Paths of Glory. I was, I don’t know, probably 13 or 14, and it was a Saturday matinee at the local cinema, and all the kids were dumped there by their parents to keep them out of the way on Saturday afternoons. I was sitting there, and this black-and-white thing came on. I was utterly blown away, because it was the first film that I really appreciated the injustice in the world that’s waiting for all of us, and just the tracking shots through the trenches. My version in Brazil in the Clark’s Pool was all about the shots from Paths of Glory. I remember going to school on Monday, telling everybody, “You’ve got to go see this movie.” Nobody did, because it was too serious. Everybody was basically normally going to see Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis movies, which I also loved. That’s the pratfall side of my nature."

"The first one is The Gold Rush, by Charlie Chaplin. It’s the apogee of his genius. I saw that film when I was 11 or 12 years old in a cinema in Ramsgate, Kensington, and there were three people in there with me. Nothing has ever made me laugh as much as that. I remember, literally — in those days they used to have a velvet kind of cover over the balcony — and I remember hanging over and laughing at the sheer f–king brilliance of the comedy in that film. The one I saw was just black-and-white, too; this was before Chaplin put a voice-over on it, which I don’t enjoy — I don’t think it serves the film well. There are certain things in there, you know — around cooking and survival and stuff — that kind of are in my soul now, as someone who tries to tell stories too."