"I love Interpol. They're my favourite modern band, I suppose. Are they considered contemporary? It was a decade ago but I think of them as a new band. Well, they're not part of the 90s anyway. 'NYC' manages to be simultaneously dirge-like and uplifting, and I don't know how he manages to balance those two things. I love the lyrics in it, 'I tried on seven faces before I knew which one to wear.' For me the art of great songwriting is when you're fascinated by the words but you don't know too much about what it's about. It's about giving but not too much. As a listener you should have to join the dots. It's a perfect record for where it came from too, it's got that feel that's very urban and alienated. I really like listening to it on the underground. The drone of the tube trains and the slightly sort of neurotic sense that you get when you're on the tube is perfect for Interpol. It's funny you should say they're like a New York Suede because when they came out people did make that comparison."

"I was half tempted to put in all of The Beatles' albums. It's really hard for me to pick one because I fucking love all of them. They mean so much to me. I think Revolver, because it pointed the way forward. It's interesting that 'Tomorrow Never Knows', which still sounds like something that's coming from the future, was the first song that they started work on. They started that in early 1966 or whatever. Pretty far out when you think about it. That song always sounds contemporary to me. That thing with the bass and drums where it's just one groove, like a loop. And all the tape sounds that are coming in and out. It's very advanced for its time. The sound was so different that you knew there was something else going on, that something was changing culturally and musically for people, which of course it did the following year. The Indian influence is there as well. Obviously it's in 'Love You To', the George track, but also the way the guitars are played. You've got a slight drone going on with the guitars."

"This got quite mixed reviews when it came out [in 2012], but I think it's really affecting. The guy had colon cancer, and when this album is great – I don't love all of it, but I love a lot of it – it's like an old man's reckoning. It's full of apologies and remorse, but still the old Bobby Womack is in there. There's still some disdain, but he's also quite sad, as he knows he's at the end of his life. I love how he sings those lines in 'Please Forgive My Heart': ""I'm a liar/I'm in a dream…"" It's a performance miles away from the swagger of an album like The Poet, which was perhaps his greatest ever record, in 1980. I remember he was seen as the godfather of contemporary soul back then – he got an album of the year in the NME around that time too [for 1984's The Poet II]. But on this record, he's this disjointed elder, and he's also someone else. He's standing in this fragmented terrain of 21st century soul music, this great survivor in a sci-fi movie. What a way to approach the end of your life."