"I wanted to pick something from Drag City and I went with Silver Jews because I think David Burman is such a great lyricist. It's funny when someone is alive, it's almost as if you're not allowed to say that about people. He's one of the best writers around. This record starts with the line 'in 1984 I was hospitalised for approaching perfection' [pauses] How much better of a first line can you have on your record?! I have a hobby of taking words and mixing them around. I can do that for a whole day, just taking four words and moving them around and mixing them up, just to find a combination that I think evokes something emotional, but David Burman is on another level. He takes language – nothing that's complicated on the surface – and puts it together in such amazing ways. He'll say things like 'Her hair was shiny like video tape' or 'the water looked like jewelry coming out of the spout', weird things you'd never thought of until he said them but they ring true. When you hear his records, he makes you feel like you've never seen the world before. So I commend him. This record is his Americana record, and I wish this is what people talked about when they use that term. He's a brilliant author explaining his vision of America to you - that should be Americana instead of some weird sappy throwback thing."

"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!"

"It is the most vexing challenge because I just find that, depending… I’m not so psychotic that my mind changes constantly on that subject, but it really depends on where you are in your life. You sort of have a rolling list of a few dozen that you cherish for different reasons. All you try to do is avoid interviews like this so you don’t get pinned down. [laughs] No, I always have trouble pinning anything to a fixed list. Why is it hard? Is it easy for you? You start thinking about the directors you leave off the list and your heart starts breaking. In chronological order, The Passion of Joan of Arc. The last time I saw that film, it struck as me as if it was an artifact from the period itself that it’s depicting. It was like a medium unto itself, and [Maria] Falconetti’s performance, it really cannot be compared to anything else. It’s beyond naturalism, it’s beyond melodrama, it’s beyond everything. It’s just coming straight out of her soul. But mainly, the last time I saw it I just had this weird time slip kind of experience where I felt like I was really seeing a mad visionary from the time who somehow invented the movie camera. [laughs] Putting on this intense pageant on this subject of intense religious devotion. I find that film a knockout. You can’t watch it lightly, but that’s all right."