"This was a record that Chris Taylor or Chris Bear introduced me to in college. We were eighteen or nineteen in New York, they were studying music and I didn’t know what the hell I was doing! I was trying to be serious about linguistics but I was kind of bullshitting myself. “I’d started writing songs but I was very secretive about it and didn’t take it seriously. I played them to Chris Taylor, he was probably the first person who heard anything I’d done, but I refused to admit to myself that I took it seriously in any real way. When I went to college I decided I wasn’t going to do music, because there was no reason for another white kid to play jazz guitar. I ended up finding songwriting instead and it became a different thing. “This is a reference point we’ve talked about over the years, when one of us mentions this record, everybody knows what we’re talking about, we talked about it on Painted Ruins in certain places. The whole basis of the groove is built on an organ drum machine and the sound of it is very ahead of its time. It’s very groovy but it’s not beating you over the head, it’s an emotional tune that has this subtly danceable beating heart. There’s a soulfulness and dreaminess to it, it accesses the emotional part of you with this really pointed and tight rhythmic quality. “We never wanted to approach music from a folky songwriter’s standpoint. Certain parts of our music have come out that way because of what we play, but it’s remembering what it was like as a teenager, being really into music from a players’ perspective and finding the emotional quality in that, trying to build something that’s soulful and hits you without beating you over the head. I love it when people can pull off that subtlety, where they’re barely touching the instrument but there’s this rhythmic quality to it. “’Aht Uh Mi Hed’ is a touchstone that’s stuck with us, it’s an aspect of music that we really appreciate. We don’t actively strive towards it, but it never quite leaves our minds."

"The Kinks were one of my favourite bands while I was growing up. I was introduced to them by MTV and the video for 'Come Dancing', which they'd play all the time. I really liked the video and the boy in that video really reminded me of one of my brothers. So I got into them through that and I also had a 'Best Of The Kinks' which I wore out because I listened to it so much. But Kinda Kinks, I didn't really listen to that record until much later. I think I was maybe in college, or after college, but it became one of those records that I would listen to all the time with James [Murphy]. We'd be at the DFA studio which, before it officially became a record label, always had the studio there, and it was a gathering place where something was about to happen. It was right around the time that James and Tim [Goldsworthy] were producing the Rapture record, I was hanging around there a lot and James was actually living in the office for a period of time too. And on Sunday mornings we'd sit around and listen to music. Kinda Kinks was one of those records. I love every song on that album but it does contain my least favourite song in the world: 'Dancing In The Street'. It's so bad that it's seeped into every other version that's ever been made, including the original version. So now all of them are ruined for me. It is the worst song. There was a brief period when MiniDisc players were kind of popular, and I loved MiniDiscs. I really wish they'd taken off because it's such a great format; it's this compact, digital format that can be edited very easily. You can make a mixtape, it was super easy to record onto, super easy to rearrange and me and James would make a lot of MiniDisc mix tapes for each other. One of the greatest things though was that I was able to make a version of Kinda Kinks without 'Dancing In The Street'."