"McCarthy are indie icons of ours – we’ve covered at least three of their songs. They showed how you could fuse music and politics. They were one of the great protest bands but it was never the gurning, spittle-in-your-face confrontational stance that some bands take. There was always some kind of sarcasm in there that would cut its subject down to its knees, and this lyric is a perfect example of that. It talks to working-class disaffection and foreshadows New Labour’s obsession with gentrification and trying to drag people into the new culture with Wi-Fi and coffee houses everywhere: “Once there was class war/ But not any longer/ Because, baby, we are all bourgeois now.”"

"Color me gone, baby. I wouldn’t have seen this movie at twelve. I wouldn’t have understood anyone who didn’t have a mission, a point. But at nineteen, my face was gravel from “points.” I was ready for a whole lot of steel nothing, an empty road at high speeds, an existential needle guiding my arms. I knew little or nothing about automobiles, but I fell in love with this road trip, and made a couple myself, LA to Detroit, Tijuana to Spokane, no sleep, all little white pills and mud coffee. I never saw anyone as beautiful as James Taylor and Dennis Wilson passing me on the left, but I was ready to follow."

"Do you know that film Empire Records? It's got Liv Tyler and Renée Zellweger in it and it's a very 90s’ coming-of-age movie about these kids who work in a record shop. I used to be completely obsessed with it, I wanted to be Liv Tyler and I wanted to have her fluffy jumper. They used to put loads of sugar in their coffee and when I was fifteen and starting to make coffee for the first time, I used to put ten sugars in it, because that was what the kids in Empire Records did! This song comes on at the end, just as all the characters are dancing together. It’s so lifting and so fresh. There are no other songs in the world where an accordion sounds so good. “I've listened to other songs by The The but I'm much more of a song person than an album person. I'll make playlists and go back again and again to the exact same song. I feel like they've got a couple of other bangers, I can't think what they're called, but 'This is the Day' sounds exactly like what it is. It sounds exactly like what they're singing: ""This is the day when things fall into place!"" “It's also a song that me and Celia really bonded over when we first met. We both realised at the same time how much we love that film and we both have it as our 'wake up in the morning and pull your finger out' song."

"Alan Price is definitely someone my parents introduced me to, it's one of those stories like, "Your father took me out on a date to O Lucky Man! and I knew he was cool", but then in high school I had the required Malcolm McDowell obsession - all rebellious and of course once you've watched Clockwork Orange you've got to go back to if...., and I'm pretty sure that O Lucky Man! is the continuation of the same character from if.... and it's just one of those great modern fables. I'm surprised people aren't as into it. If you watch that opening scene in black and white, it's kind of the same over the top kangaroo court scene that we were trying to get in the Break Line song 'I'm To Blame'. The silent scene in the movie is brutal but it's also ridiculous and over the top. Malcolm McDowell has a giant moustache, he's like a South American coffee picker - he's caught stealing coffee beans and they go to his trial and this disgusting judge smoking a cigar, drooling, sentences him to getting his hands chopped off; it's very extreme and it just flashes "GUILTY. GUILTY. GUILTY" and we do that in our song with everyone saying "guilty", it's a little O Lucky Man! homage. The line in that song, "In case of murder in the second degree/ The jury now all agrees guilty/ So you will hang, hang by the noose" and my friend's dad said you don't get hanged for murder in the second degree, but we need that "murder in the second de-gree", that extra syllable!"

“This book scared the shit out of me. I picked it up after watching the film adaptation by Tarkovsky, which is one of my favourite movies. Sometimes I feel like the only explanation for human life is that our planet is a terrible god. I like thinking that planets are living, sentient behemoths that we completely misunderstand. I’m horrified to think what it would be like if such an abstract sentience had no regard for us, or enjoying toying with us. The act of repeatedly killing a doppelganger or a loved one seems so horrific; how could anyone think of something so awful? Whenever people pour cream into coffee in a clear glass, it reminds me of this book, because that’s what I imagine the surface of Solaris to look like.”